# Lucid Dreaming > Attaining Lucidity >  >  ADA: Right or Wrong for Lucidity?

## Sageous

I’ve noticed that *All Day Awareness (ADA)* has been gaining in popularity lately, and one tutorial and advisory thread after another has come to accept it as given that ADA is an important, if not essential, tool for achieving lucidity.  I have been familiar with ADA for a long time, and understand its value as a tool for meditation, but I for probably one have never considered ADA a useful tool for developing LD’ing skills.  Indeed, I have been wondering lately if the rise of ADA’s popularity might be moving people away from, rather than toward, consistent lucidity.

So, at the risk of the slings and arrows that accompany contradiction, and at the suggestion of a couple of interested dreamers on another thread, I thought I’d start a thread to discuss ADA, and maybe determine whether practicing it clears or clutters the path to lucidity. I hope everyone will bear with me through this post so we can get a good baseline for healthy discussion. Here we go: 

*First, what is ADA?*  Here is the definition from DV’s Wiki, which seems pretty straightforward and more than acceptable: 





> ADA is all about developing a habit of paying attention to details of your surroundings and yourself (awareness) while awake, with the intention of being more aware in your dreams. You can focus on things like the objects in the room around you, your muscles as you walk down the street, people's faces, your own breathing, the sound of the wind, or the pressure you use to hit a key in your keyboard. Everything in your surroundings, including any sensation, can be used to practice ADA.



Now, *this thread is for discussion of ADA,* where hopefully LD’er’s will offer their opinions about why ADA works or why they think it is not very helpful.  Regardless of my stated personal (and still quite flexible) opinion, this is not an OP announcing that ADA doesn’t work, so please let’s not get into an “Is too, because I said so!” “Is not, because I said so!” sort of argument, because that doesn’t help anyone.

It would be great to hear from both experienced LDer’s and novices alike.  From the experienced dreamers we can get opinions from dreamers who have had more than a couple of successful dreams using ADA, or have found it unhelpful.  Plus, because all techniques, no matter how useful, tend to work well a couple of times thanks to the placebo effect, and then are “inexplicably” rendered useless after the placebo effect wears off, it would be nice to hear from novices (aka newbies)  who practiced ADA but have seen little to no ongoing success with LD’ing.

*Basically there are just two questions to consider:*

1. Has ADA worked for you? If so, how and why?

2. Regardless of your success, what is your take on ADA?

If you have any questions about this, or my way-too-brief opinion below, please ask.

So I hope we’ll have a good discussion among lots of dreamers, experienced and novice alike, that everyone stays calm and open, and I also hope that I don’t get dragged into some electronic public square to be punished for my heresy!

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*Here is my take on ADA:*

On paper, ADA seems ideal to LD’ing, because it exercises your awareness.  On paper. In reality, though, I think it exercises the wrong awareness necessary to successfully LD. 

Huh, you ask?

Yeah, that does sound strange, but in truth it is not.  And be assured I am not playing some silly semantics game. The sort of awareness we want to develop and have on hand for LD’ing is *self-awareness*, whose definition and practice lies at the other end of the consciousness spectrum from the awareness practiced in ADA. 

*Self-awareness* is nothing more -- or less -- than being aware that you are here, that you have an effect on everything around you, and everything around you has an effect on you.  Self-awareness is the sense that “I am here, and I am interacting with reality” which is also the sense you want to have during a dream. In other words, it is the most “unnatural” state of consciousness, in that we only invented sentience a short time ago, evolutionarily-speaking.  

Mastering self-awareness allows a dreamer to know that the universe she is in is a dream, and that universe is of her own making, a part of her consciousness... fairly important things to know for successful LD'ing, I think!

*Awareness* in this context is the condition of being on one’s guard, conscious of your surroundings, or simply knowing that there is stuff going on around you. Awareness is the sense that “the world is here, and I am a small part of it.” Awareness is a primordial function that exists to some degree in every living thing, and always has.

As opposed to self-awareness, which is drawn from biologically unique sentient consciousness (which is the basis for a whole other thread, I think, but ask if you want more about that), awareness is a universally common natural function: all living things practice awareness, with most of them being truly adept at ADA. A mouse, for instance, practices  ADA far better than we do, so as not to get eaten.  Awareness at this level is fine, and ought to be practiced; we all need to pay attention!  But awareness at this level -- which by the way is already built, naturally, into dreams -- is anathema to lucidity.  This is so because natural awareness causes a dreamer to believe that the world of his dream is the world that is here, and that the dreamer is but a part of it.  ADA, I think, would only amplify that feeling:

ADA teaches you to pay attention to _everything_ around you, every physical impulse you can comfortably absorb.  Doing this all day, every day, might eventually lead you to believe that the world is huge, complex, and you are just a small unwitting participant in it “all.” That may all be true, I suppose, but I think it might not be the best cognitive place a budding LD’er necessarily wants to go.  

That is because, come dreamtime, though your ADA training will have helped you to notice lots of details in your dream, and possibly has increased your chances of spotting a dream sign or two, there is a better chance that you will _believe_, from all that daytime observation, that this dream world you are in is much bigger than you, and you are only an insignificant player in it… the dream is not yours. 

In other words, ADA might embed in you a sense that the dream world is real, that all these details you are observing have to be there, were always there, and did not spring from your own unconscious imagination.  

Self-awareness, on the other hand, allows you to remember that this dream world, complex and enormous as it may be, is simply an extension of your own mind and everything that happens here is a result of your presence.  From that comes lucidity, control, and adventures of your own conscious invention.

*Tl;dr:* ADA is fine, but you must have self-awareness in order to achieve and sustain lucidity. Enhanced natural awareness may actually diminish your chances of LD’ing because it makes the dream world too important, and it would be especially damaging if you practiced it in place of working on your self-awareness. 

That's what I have so far... anyone care to discuss?

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## Meskhetyw

Well presented.

I have practiced a form of Yoga ADA (present moment awareness) on and off for about 10 years (mostly off), but mainly as you put it, for paying attention and as a means to balance out my natural tendency to dream even while I am awake. It is difficult to say how much this has helped as far as lucid dreaming is concerned because I practiced it alongside my own version of Dream Yoga, which is essentially self awareness, and not general environmental awareness.

That said, I agree with just about everything you have said. I think it is probable that many people who have had success with ADA are actually including in it a lot of self awareness without calling it such; making it lean more in this or that direction.

I have found general awareness to be very useful for things like when I am out in public (being on guard),when speaking to others (internal awareness), etc. These things have their obvious benefits in other aspects of lucid dreaming, such as visualization, clarity, stability, and concentration for techniques, but without the discriminating mind they might not have much effect when it comes to gaining lucidity within the dream itself. 

Personally, I have had much success with Dream Yoga, basically my version of this has replaced my "ADA" time with a constant will to know which reality I am in and to watch for anything unusual or dreamlike; so in that sense I am always looking for trouble, remembering who I am, where I am, what my dream signs are, and so forth. I do not do this for the entire day (and I have a difficult time believing that anyone but monks do), but it is for several hours in total some days, and only a few hours on other days. Sometimes a DC will convince me that I am crazy and everything is normal, but I find more often than not that really unusual things do not go unnoticed.

I look forward to this thread developing, we may all learn a great deal and save a lot of time and frustration because of it.

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## tofur

so how would one practice self awareness?  would observing your thoughts and generally observing your self count? literally just be aware of every aspect of ones self?

thanks for bringing this up btw, as a novice just getting into this I'm sure I will learn a lot and possibly shave time off my learning curve.

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## JoannaB

I think ADA, if practiced in a way that could be useful for LD, can be very useful. The useful ADA I think involves reducing or eliminating doing things on autopilot while one's thoughts are elsewhere, which is very useful because if one's habit is to do stuff on autopilot in waking life then one is likely to do stuff on autopilot while dreaming as well, increasing one's questioning of reality, paying more attention in general, increasing one's meta awareness. I suspect though that one can indeed increase awareness in a useless way which would be if one got information overload from paying attention to too many details, but doing it as blindly paying attention without questioning. However, I would say that the fault there would be that someone is doing ADA wrong, not that ADA is wrong.

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## Zoth

Great topic Sageous, one that I wanted to discuss a long time ago.

I'll be brief (at work) in this initial post, but let expose my main view on ADA:

ADA's success is not on the attention payed to sensory input. Now, everyone might disagree with me here, but nowhere paying attention to sensory input gives you a higher degree of awareness. How could it? The fact that you're aware of sensory input gives you, at most, a biggest degree of attention to details, but as we know it, attention to details doesn't necessarily mean lucidity: as alert as we might be in the dream, we seem to lack meta-consciousness to assess our state. You might say "but it goes along other things like reality checks, we simply just need to add them", but reality checks are a thing in their own. If the questioning and the reality checks are the ones responsible for lucidity, then it's not the technique that is effective.

I must say (I know this is anecdotal evidence, but the OP did ask for experiences) that the best thing I get out of ADA is dream recall. It really improves after several weeks of intense ADA. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I for sure would recommend a few exercises of ADA during the day for a person trying to recall more dreams. Anyway...

So what makes ADA work?

One word: mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to living the moment, to pause your mind from the constant monologues it's running, and to focus it in the present moment. Mindfulness has many attested effects on mental health: it reduces stress, it makes people more aware (and importantly self-aware!), and this self-awareness also relates to feelings, just like meditation does. You might even seen the expression "mindfulness meditation": it refers  to the specific practice of focusing your mind in only one stimuli, and ignoring all the rest. I think I still have some article around that talks about these advantages in a tested way.

That being said, it seems to me that ADA is an incomplete technique. It does start off great: be more aware. But awareness without questioning, is the same as learning without thinking critically (which is actually a wide spread phenomenon in the majority of our education system!). I agree strongly with Sageous in this point: the mere attention to sensory input won't help you with lucidity: in fact, it may immerse you so deeply in the roots of the dream that you actually might forget the most important thing: to question that same reality you're paying to much attention to.

Also, don't forget one big principle of maintaining lucidity: keep a balance between attachment and detachment with the dream world. Too detached, and you might end waking up. Too attached, you might end up getting caught on the plot and loose lucidity. So giving this amount of relevance to sensory input seems to me a bit counter-productive.

This is why I state ADA is not a "wrong technique", it's only an incomplete one. Wording aside, you can actually see some core similarities with other advocates of awareness, like Sageous itself. But where the line is draw, is how exactly you face your reality: do you embrace it like you do in ADA, or do you close in yourself as the agent in it?

In the bigger picture, awareness is one of the hardest concepts regarding lucidity. And that's because, like Sageous said, every living thing has a degree of awareness. But it's clear that it's not that awareness that gives you lucidity: the answers lies more on the side of an awareness towards that same awareness: the meta-consciousness, evaluating your own awareness.

PS: no one mentions the word mindfulness in their posts, but just by reading the few above, you actually notice several people mentioning the concept. All-day mindfulness would be a more appropriate name I'd give to ADA (just kidding kingyoshi ^^).

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## swiggityswag

Hmm, very interesting. I think you may be on to something huge with the whole self awareness thing. "Master" lucid dreamers, such as the ones on this site that literally have an LD every night can just KNOW that the universe they are in is just a dream, right from the get go.

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## KingYoshi

I believe it is safe to assume that I back ADA 100% when it comes to achieving lucidity. Its not for promotional reasons or any other nonsense. I have practiced ADA for a long time and at this point, I practice pretty much nothing else aside from DJing. ADA has increased my natural level of awareness within the dream state and led to more and better quality lucid dreams. Not only this, but it has provided me with a massive level of control within the dream state. I don't only think ADA should be looked at as a quality technique, I believe to be the absolute best practice for lucid dreaming and I have tried everything. Again, I didn't create this, I just compiled it into a tutorial because I was repeatedly asked about it back in the day. I can't imagine how many new dreamers have pm'd me or posted in the ADA thread and came away with their first lucid experiences soon after.


Edit after rereading the posts in this thread: I

f you are in a dream and you are aware of your surroundings in the dream, that IS self-awareness. Everything in your dream is yourSELF. That is all you and your creation. Your in your own mind. If you guys are going BD and you think the dream state is actually another "realm" (for lack of a better word) or there are beings and all these other unproven aspects, then yeah, ADA might not be for you. This is not a BD technique (in the way I wrote it anyway). The tutorial/compilation was written by me in a manner that directly correlates to lucid dreaming. I left out any form of spirituality aspects that Buddhists Monks use dreaming for. There is no spiritual, yoga, or any sort of religious aspects to the way it is written. Its only for awareness and only used to increase the lucid experience and frequency. I lucid dream for entertainment. I'll the leave all the BD stuff to everyone else. I could explain in great detail how and why it works, but it is described in great detail in my tutorial. Its not like I just said the technique, I explained how and why it works.

I didn't call it mindfulness because that is more along the yoga, Buddhist, meditation type of term. I have no interest in any of those things. My ADA, is for lucid dreaming and lucid dreaming only. If someone wants to take it to the spiritual level, then cool. I can and will still help them practice the technique without any form of bias, but the spiritual side is not in my area of expertise.

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## Sageous

Great responses, people; I'm hoping there'll be more!

Here are just a few quick responses; which I'll keep brief so as not to interfere with the cadence of the thread:

*Meskhetyw:* Great post, and I think you did a much better job describing ADA as _a_ good tool for lucidity (by way of self-awareness), but not _the_ tool; thank you!  I'm reasonably familiar with dream yoga, though, and you have to wonder why the yogis don't use ADA (or do they?).

*tofur:* Since self-awareness is a subject unto itself, it might be best to not go off on such a tangent at this point (maybe later!).  But I do talk about it a bit in the first session of my WILD class and in my Lucid Dreaming Fundamentals thread; if you're interested, you might have a look over there, and feel free to post any questions on the WILD Q & A thread or the Fundamentals thread.  I hope you do!

*JoannaB:* I mostly agree, but you raise a question:  can't ADA be susceptible to falling into "autopilot" mode, just as RC's are?

*Zoth:* That was brief?  :wink2:   I'd never thought of ADA for dream recall, and honestly still have trouble doing so, though you are a very credible source, even when anecdotal!  

Funny, though I've used the term "mindfulness," or direct synonyms anyway, in many of my posts and I think my WILD class, I managed to leave it out here.  My bad, I think, because self-awareness and mindfulness go hand-in-hand.  But do _natural_ awareness, as tapped in ADA, and mindfulness share the same camaraderie?  Of that I'm not so sure -- so, I think, practicing mindfulness (and right-mindfulness, for the spiritual types) is closer to developing self-awareness than ADA.  If I'm wrong, be sure to tell me why...

*King Yoshi:* First, rest assured that I had no idea you had an ADA tutorial, and this is in no way an attack on your work or your opinion.  Indeed, your input here is most valued! 

I think you and I have very different views of what self-awareness is, as I believe it is not just awareness of your surroundings in a dream (or waking life); it is awareness of your _presence_ in those surroundings and an awareness of the interaction of your presence with the surroundings, and they with you.  That difference, I think, is significant.  Also, dreamers are generally quite aware of their surroundings in any dream, whether lucid or not.  If they weren't, then NLD's would effectively not exist because, since if non-lucid dreamers are unaware of their dreams' surroundings, those dreams would never be recalled (that sounded better in my head).

Also, for what it's worth, I am not a Buddhist and any similarity to my work and words is, trust me, purely coincidental! I also don't see any real religious bent to anything being said here.

I hope you'll share more, especially with regard to how ADA increases control, how it can be used as the only tool for inducing lucidity, and perhaps how, without self-awareness (as I've defined it above) in the dream, you are able to differentiate between actual LD's and NLD's _about_ LD's.


That's all I dare say for now, guys, and feel free to ignore me if I got in the way of the conversation.  Thanks again for posting, and I look forward to more...

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## KingYoshi

> *King Yoshi:* First, rest assured that I had no idea you had an ADA tutorial, and this is in no way an attack on your work or your opinion.  Indeed, your input here is most valued! 
> 
> I think you and I have very different views of what self-awareness is, as I believe it is not just awareness of your surroundings in a dream (or waking life); it is awareness of your _presence_ in those surroundings and an awareness of the interaction of your presence with the surroundings, and they with you.  That difference, I think, is significant.  Also, dreamers are generally quite aware of their surroundings in any dream, whether lucid or not.  If they weren't, then NLD's would effectively not exist because, since if non-lucid dreamers are unaware of their dreams' surroundings, those dreams would never be recalled (that sounded better in my head).
> 
> I hope you'll share more, especially with regard to how ADA increases control, how it can be used as the only tool for inducing lucidity, and perhaps how, without self-awareness (as I've defined it above) in the dream, you are able to differentiate between actual LD's and NLD's _about_ LD's.
> 
> 
> That's all I dare say for now, guys, and feel free to ignore me if I got in the way of the conversation.  Thanks again for posting, and I look forward to more...



No worries. I just assumed you knew I had wrote the tutorial. I wrote the one that initially coined the acronym, ADA, and brought the idea of using it for lucid dreaming to DreamViews. Your talk of self-awareness is exactly how I describe performing ADA. Being aware of your surroundings and how their presence feels and effects the dreamer. Our views are the same. What ADA does, is train yourself to recognize that you are within a dream, simply because you ARE within a dream. The awareness you build in waking life helps you differentiate the natural feeling of being awake as opposed to being asleep. I become lucid in my dreams because I "feel" it is a dream. I just know its a dream because I have trained myself to recognize the difference between the two states without resorting to any sort of ques or direct methods. If you want to know how ADA was initially introduce here, give my tutorial a read  :tongue2: . I have been gone for a long time, so I have no doubts that some have altered the views and see ADA a bit differently from what was initially intended.

ADA not only helps with achieving lucidity, but with recall, dream control, clarity, and nearly every aspect of lucid dreaming.

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## Sageous

^^ Thanks for clarifying!  It seems we are indeed on the same page.  Or at least the same chapter, which is fine with me.  

I will check out your tutorial, I think, because the ADA I'm referring to has been around a very long time, and if you introduced something different here, that is very cool... I do fear that the increasingly popular references to ADA are more closely linked to the DV wiki definition -- and traditional ADA -- than yours, though; maybe it's good you're back?

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## KingYoshi

Lol, mindfulness and the basis of ADA (the background and its extensive usage in every day life for spiritual, yoga and other reasons) have indeed been around for a long time. Buddhist Monks are one known practitioner for using this basis to gain lucidity. ADA, the acronym, the title All Day Awareness, and the initial written technique used specifically for recreational lucid dreaming is all me  :tongue2: .

The DV wiki definition came after and was created from my tutorial, btw.

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## CosmicIron

I recently conducted a survey on my personal forum. We received 470+ anonymous replies. One of the questions is how people achieve lucidity. Interestingly, a large percentage (45% or more) of LDs turn out to be spontaneous, meaning they just happened, not because people spotted something odd or some recurring dream signs. The later case had fewer than 5%. 

The above result led us to question the relationship between awareness and lucid dreams. We naturally believe it is awareness which triggers lucid dreams, to the point no one ever questions it. And many techniques are invented based on that belief. Now I'm not saying awareness is not a factor that causes LDs, but I think people should at least treat it with reservation. What if lucid dreams have nothing to do with awareness? If that's a possibility then we may all be barking at the wrong trees.

Back to ADA. It promises to increase one's awareness to a point that when dreaming one can recognize the surroundings being a dream. For this to make sense we need to make a few assumptions:

1. DILDs are caused by a high level awareness and one's ability to identify oddities, dream signs, or other incoherence in a dream. 

2. The habit of staying highly aware can indeed be carried into dreams. More generically speaking, it's the assumption that any day-time habits can be carried into dreams.

3. Assuming ADA works, then we should be able to assume it works in such fashion:

- It should produce DILDs consistently, without other aid, such as WBTB, auto suggestion, and so on.
- It should work whenever there is a dream, even during NREM.

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## Sageous

*King Yoshi:*

Hmm.  I'd swear I'd been bumping into the practice of ADA, and the specific term, for decades now; I guess I was mistaken.  Regardless, I hope that you will allow this thread to move on, based on the idea that the premise set by the OP is ADA as it seems to be understood now -- just observing everything around you -- with the assumption that we are discussing a concept and not a King Yoshi product.  

If you can't allow that, and continue to claim ownership of a practice (as I described in the OP) that has been around for centuries, well, then, I guess this thread simply cannot proceed.  Too bad, too; it felt like we were on to something.

That would explain, I suppose, why this subject is never brought up -- it would have been nice if a moderator had chimed in that I was stepping on someone's proprietary product; Since I was asked by other members to start this thread, I suddenly feel like the butt of a practical joke.



 ::cheers::

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## KingYoshi

Lol, I don't claim to own any products. Slow down chief. Mindfulness and awareness have been around since the dawn of time. Its like sports. No one created "sports," but someone named and outlined a specific one called football. Just like no one created mindfulness and awareness, but someone (yours truly) outlined and named a specific form, ADA (All Day Awareness). I, literally, created the term and acronym as I was writing the tutorial  :tongue2: . You can google it if you wish and try to find it used prior to the creation, but its not going to be found. I'm not going on a power trip here, I wrote the tutorial to help others achieve lucidity and that only. I had no intention of it becoming as popular as it has, but I'm grateful and I do take some pride in that. Its got a lot of views and its a catchy acronym I suppose. I guess that contributed to it being spread. I didn't realize how widely used it had become until I made my way back a few months ago. And, technically, as its posted on these forums, it is the property of DreamViews now anyway. When you see ADA used on this site, its 99% of the time used in reference to that tutorial or the DV Wiki term. The DV Wiki term actually came after and from that tutorial. I only claim to have created the title, acronym and the compilation. Like I stated in the tutorial, "I didn't create this practice," so you can relax on that front. Not sure why you are getting so worked up about it anyway. I was on staff and the Dream Guide Leader back when that tutorial was created. The mods all know me and i'm sure they didn't see you as stepping on any toes. I didn't even see it that way at all. Of course, I'm going to defend the practice. 

As for the thread continuing, the users on this sight are talking about ADA, while you are referring to awareness and mindfulness. While similar and both from the same type origins, they are different things. ADA was created specifically for lucid dreaming and lucid dreaming only. While awareness and mindfulness are practices from the beginning of time.

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## Sageous

^^ Why does everyone always think I'm getting "worked up?" I think I need to change my writing style.  In truth I have no emotional ties to this term or its use, and am happy to go back to defining and defending self-awareness in its own right. Elsewhere.

That said, I don't think further input on my part will be helpful, because I've clearly misunderstood ADA as it is used on these forums, and also because I have no interest in commenting on the efficacy of someone else's technique (just as I would never comment on CosmicIron's SSILD technique).  That was not my point, but apparently it will be the only direction this thread can go in.  Which sucks.

Again, too bad; it's a good subject that may be very misunderstood on these forums.

And again, be assured that I am not "worked up," "angry," "excited," or any other sort of thing. At worst I'm disappointed, and at best relieved that I no longer have to deal with a thread which I really didn't want to start in the first place.

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## KingYoshi

"If you can't allow that, and continue to claim ownership of a practice (as I described in the OP) that has been around for centuries, well, then, I guess this thread simply cannot proceed. Too bad, too"

Lol, what do you expect? This clearly shows disgust and the fact you thought I was trying to take credit for something you felt was ridiculous to take credit for. That is called getting worked up. I didn't say angry, mad, or excited. You are going up against the wrong person here. My involvement on this site is purely for the benefit of others. You are relatively new here, so I suppose you just don't know much about me. Claiming ownership of something that isn't mine, is not in my style and has no benefit to me. Like I said, its all DreamViews property now anyway. ADA works and works very, very well. If you want to more details even after reading the tutorial, I'd be happy to explain as deeply as you wish. Just ask me any questions you may have and I'll get right to it.

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## Sageous

Okay.  Maybe it was disgust.  And, given that there will be an explanatory note from you regardless of what I say, no doubt starting with a condescending "LOL," I think you're making my point for me while eliminating any chance of useful conversation on this thread, and only making participation here that much less pleasant.

This thread was a mistake, and I offer my deepest thanks to those who (knowingly?) asked me to start it.  I really don't have time for this.

Enjoy, King Yoshi.

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## KingYoshi

> Okay.  Maybe it was disgust.  And, given that there will be an explanatory note from you regardless of what I say, no doubt starting with a condescending "LOL," I think you're making my point for me while eliminating any chance of useful conversation on this thread, and only making participation here that much less pleasant.
> 
> This thread was a mistake, and I offer my deepest thanks to those who (knowingly?) asked me to start it.  I really don't have time for this.
> 
> Enjoy, King Yoshi.



Of course, the "lol" was condescending. It is extremely justified after your off-base "disgust." Don't take it out on me because you accidentally created a thread not knowing all the background information. I'm sorry that you are upset, but what do you want me to say? lol.

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## Sageous

^^ Nice.  

Apparently the disgust was justified. 

All apologies to the earlier, less pompous participants of this thread; it was good while it lasted, and I am truly sorry for my own hand in helping trash it.  All I can say is I tried.

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## KingYoshi

> ^^ Nice.  
> 
> Apparently the disgust was justified. 
> 
> All apologies to the earlier, less pompous participants of this thread; it was good while it lasted, and I am truly sorry for my own hand in helping trash it.  All I can say is I tried.



Pompous, lol. You made a thread saying that my lucid dreaming technique was not good for lucid dreaming. Sorry, bud. This thread was doomed from the beginning.

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## Sageous

^^ AND I tried, more than once, to back away from "your" technique (I thought you said it was DV's, BTW?) and talk about that on which it is based.  This thread may have been doomed, but it was your childish arrogance that buried it.  Thanks.

So much for trying.  I'm out.

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## KingYoshi

I'm neither childish, nor arrogant. The name calling is not coming from my end if you haven't noticed,  :tongue2: . The title of your thread still has "ADA" in it. I'm not going to have ADA be discredited because you made a thread without knowing fully what you were creating. It IS DV's thread and I am very loyal to DV. ADA has worked wonders for lucid dreamers and its going to continue to do so. Stop trying to make this about you and me. This is about helping people get lucid. So, a thread that is off-base and could possibly give a lucid hopeful the wrong idea, should not be here. Its as simple as that. You have all these ideas of pompous arrogance and ownership of techniques on your brain, while I'm just looking out for the best interest of DV and this community. Maybe you should look into a mirror before you start dropping these labels on me, lol.

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## JoannaB

Boys, calm down please, I would like to continue to be able to respect both of you.

Yes, I believe ADA is a great tool for lucidity. Yes, I think it can be and often has been misunderstood. Yes, just like reality checks, if misunderstood, it can be self defeating by falling into auto-pilot mode, which is ironic given how it is about leaving auto-pilot mode. I personally do not care whether it is called ADA or Shmuples, but since a lot of people on this site know it as ADA now, and noone knows it as Schmuples, could we please continue to call it ADA. I am glad you coined the term, KingYoshi, and popularized this important technique on DV. I am glad you started this thread to clarify misunderstandings about ADA, Sageous. Peace?

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## KingYoshi

Definitely peace on my end. I respect Sageous for his vast knowledge on lucid dreaming and the contributions he makes to this community. I have even showed newbies some of his posts/threads prior to this. This thread, however, is off base and shouldn't have been created without even understanding what ADA actually is. On top of that, it was set-up as a debate type thread and I did nothing more than debate. I see no fault of any sort on my end, but I didn't lose any respect for Sageous. He just made a mistake...it happens. No worries.

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## tofur

so what I'm getting from this is that the trick is to involve your self in the awareness work, and not just focus on your surroundings but instead combine the two and be aware of how one is interacting with the world, and that both yoshi and sageous are on the same page there...  seems only cosmic iron is questioning the importance of awareness to lucid dreaming altogether which is a little out there for me and will likely stay there without some further input and explanation

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## CosmicIron

> so what I'm getting from this is that the trick is to involve your self in the awareness work, and not just focus on your surroundings but instead combine the two and be aware of how one is interacting with the world, and that both yoshi and sageous are on the same page there...  seems only cosmic iron is questioning the importance of awareness to lucid dreaming altogether which is a little out there for me and will likely stay there without some further input and explanation



I know it sounds unbelievable, and I'm not throwing out conclusions of any sort. I do hope though people can think about the questions I raised more carefully before dismissing them entirely. After all, lucid dreaming is a phenomena we don't yet fully understand, and there haven't been much significant breakthroughs in recent years.

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## Sageous

> Boys, calm down please, I would like to continue to be able to respect both of you.



I'm always at peace, JoannaB, thank you!  I do get stubborn on occasion, but I'll try to shake it off.  Sorry, again, for my contribution to the annoying disruption. 

I hope the conversation can continue, somehow.

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## Meskhetyw

Well, I had a part in dragging you into this, so I'll give it a shot.

Perhaps a change in terminology is in order. It has been proposed that "mindfulness" could be used, but this is also a blanket term. Many are familiar with the Buddhist Vipassana meditation and "mindfulness throughout daily activities", but there is a much older and more complete system (5,000 years old) of Yoga (not the exercise), which teaches mindfulness of the environment, the ten senses, the body, the breath, and ever more inward to thoughts, the subconscious, Dream Yoga, and Yoga Nidra. The idea is similar, the moment is observed ever more precisely and things are set aside as being "not self".

I was under the impression that the majority of people here are using a form of awareness that is merely environmental with perhaps some thought observing mixed in, as many posts seem to suggest, so all day awareness seemed an appropriate term for this and for other reasons. Regardless however, I suppose we should be clear in each case which form of awareness or mindfulness we are referring to. Perhaps using the addition "mindfulness of ....." will suffice.

The potential of this thread is to understand the mechanisms which allow for certain of these practices to bring about lucidity or to hinder it, and because of this I hope that people will share their views on any or all of these. I have had most success with Dream Yoga, but I have read Sageous's self awareness method and it seems to work without the need for a constant emphasis on dreaming. Zoth has mentioned mindfulness and seems to think that it has a positive impact on lucidity. I'd be interested in hearing more of this. Why these things work is worth exploring, so that we can as lucid dreamers make our practices more efficient.

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## Sageous

*For what it's worth:*

I just read the OP of King Yoshi's ADA/DILD tutorial and it seems it lines up nicely with the ADA as noted in my OP here. Also it pretty much parallels with "ADA" as its been practiced in the form of mindfulness and other meditative practices for centuries; no difference whatsoever, except that it is attached as a technique to LD'ing. So yeah, I guess we were debating, specifically, a portion of *King Yoshi's* DILD technique... had I known,  I would have not done the thread or at least warned you (king Yoshi) of its posting.  But here we are, regardless, and after a night's sleep I still think there is much to be discussed...

So your defenses are quite welcome, as they ever were.  Only now in my opinion they are directly on topic -- whether I was aware that you coined ADA or not, since it seems I knew exactly what I was talking about in the OP, regardless of my ignorance of the DV-specific history.  

As it turns out, we never needed to have that exchange last night ... I should have taken the high road and stopped to read your tutorial then, I guess.  My bad; it was late and I was very tired. Water under the bridge?

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## tofur

> I know it sounds unbelievable, and I'm not throwing out conclusions of any sort. I do hope though people can think about the questions I raised more carefully before dismissing them entirely. After all, lucid dreaming is a phenomena we don't yet fully understand, and there haven't been much significant breakthroughs in recent years.



I re-read your post and when I think back to the couple of lucids I've had so far, all have been DILDS, and they were spontaneous.  I didn't see something and think "thats not possible, this must be a dream".  It was like BAM, randomly totally awake, and THEN the "holy s#*#, this is a dream".  What made me snap out of it I can't say, there was plenty going on there before hand to tip me off and in one I became lucid in the most realistic setting possible in that dream.  So basically, the awareness showed up after the random moment of awakening, not before.  So I guess the trick is to figure out what causes that change over

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## Sageous

> Well, I had a part in dragging you into this, so I'll give it a shot.
> 
> Perhaps a change in terminology is in order. It has been proposed that "mindfulness" could be used, but this is also a blanket term. Many are familiar with the Buddhist Vipassana meditation and "mindfulness throughout daily activities", but there is a much older and more complete system (5,000 years old) of Yoga (not the exercise), which teaches mindfulness of the environment, the ten senses, the body, the breath, and ever more inward to thoughts, the subconscious, Dream Yoga, and Yoga Nidra. The idea is similar, the moment is observed ever more precisely and things are set aside as being "not self".
> 
> I was under the impression that the majority of people here are using a form of awareness that is merely environmental with perhaps some thought observing mixed in, as many posts seem to suggest, so all day awareness seemed an appropriate term for this and for other reasons. Regardless however, I suppose we should be clear in each case which form of awareness or mindfulness we are referring to. Perhaps using the addition "mindfulness of ....." will suffice.
> 
> The potential of this thread is to understand the mechanisms which allow for certain of these practices to bring about lucidity or to hinder it, and because of this I hope that people will share their views on any or all of these. I have had most success with Dream Yoga, but I have read Sageous's self awareness method and it seems to work without the need for a constant emphasis on dreaming. Zoth has mentioned mindfulness and seems to think that it has a positive impact on lucidity. I'd be interested in hearing more of this. Why these things work is worth exploring, so that we can as lucid dreamers make our practices more efficient.



That would be an interesting change of subject, I think, and actually it might help, in that in describing other forms of awareness in a positive vein, we might open make some headway.  That said:

As I developed simple practices to build self-awareness, I came up with a sort of reverse-RC (as noted in my WILD class as a RRC). Instead of taking the RC path of asking yourself if you are dreaming, you ask yourself where you just were, where you are, and where you will be shortly, and you do so with a real sense of wonder about your interaction with your local reality as you did/will do these things.  I go into greater detail on the exercise here, if you're curious.

Why does this help?  Because it establishes a sense of your involvement in reality, that you have an effect on it, and it on you.  If you can develop this sense into a sort of intuition, come dream time that sense will help you to intuitively accept the nature of your dream as a part of your self, and from that will come an easier path to lucidity and control without confusing preconceptions.  I go into much more detail on this in the class, but essentially I'm saying that if you become intuitively aware of your interaction with reality, and are able to honestly ponder your interaction with it, you will have no trouble recognizing your presence in a dream, and remembering that the dream is you ... the rest is sheer lucidity. That's extremely brief, I know, but I'm pressed for time right now ... hopefully others will chime in? 

Regarding changing the term: I think for the sake of argument that King Yoshi pretty much nailed what we were describing with ADA; it would be difficult to use something else, even when discussing the "merely environmental" ADA that seems to be prevalent on these forums.  Though mindfulness is a good term, it does have a religious ring to it, I think, and it also encompasses so many different types -- and grades -- of practice, we might do more harm than good using it.  Can't think of another term other than MEADA, though!

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## Sageous

> I re-read your post and when I think back to the couple of lucids I've had so far, all have been DILDS, and they were spontaneous.  I didn't see something and think "thats not possible, this must be a dream".  It was like BAM, randomly totally awake, and THEN the "holy s#*#, this is a dream".  What made me snap out of it I can't say, there was plenty going on there before hand to tip me off and in one I became lucid in the most realistic setting possible in that dream.  So basically, the awareness showed up after the random moment of awakening, not before.  So I guess the trick is to figure out what causes that change over



Most if not all of my DILD's work this way as well.  I think personally that this sort of "spontaneous" lucidity isn't really so spontaneous at all.  Rather, it is a result of your waking-life attitudes (i.e., you're open to being lucid in the first place) and perhaps expectations you might not be consciously harboring ... in other words, you desired lucidity, and your unconscious obliged.  

As I think CosmicIron already mentioned, in that the mechanics involved in the forming of this spontaneous DILD are still not too clear, but I truly believe they lie not in mysterious functions of the dreaming mind, but in the nature and attitudes of the waking-life consciousness.  Developing that attitude ought to be possible then.

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## fogelbise

> Water under the bridge?



I hope so  :smiley:   I know Sageous has spent considerable time answering my questions and numerous other's questions and I see that KingYoshi has answered numerous questions as well over the years. They have that in common: attempting to help others on their quest for regular lucidity. I have not practiced ADA or at least not as described in the OP but I would like to add that further debate on this could potentially come to a consensus on what will help those seeking regular lucid dreams. Most methods related to ADA, awareness, mindfulness, etc, require a good amount of time and dedication and it would be good to know if they are beneficial to lucid dreaming if that is all that someone is looking for in practicing the methods.

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## KingYoshi

> *For what it's worth:*
> 
> I just read the OP of King Yoshi's ADA/DILD tutorial and it seems it lines up nicely with the ADA as noted in my OP here. Also it pretty much parallels with "ADA" as its been practiced in the form of mindfulness and other meditative practices for centuries; no difference whatsoever, except that it is attached as a technique to LD'ing. So yeah, I guess we were debating, specifically, a portion of *King Yoshi's* DILD technique... had I known,  I would have not done the thread or at least warned you (king Yoshi) of its posting.  But here we are, regardless, and after a night's sleep I still think there is much to be discussed...
> 
> So your defenses are quite welcome, as they ever were.  Only now in my opinion they are directly on topic -- whether I was aware that you coined ADA or not, since it seems I knew exactly what I was talking about in the OP, regardless of my ignorance of the DV-specific history.  
> 
> As it turns out, we never needed to have that exchange last night ... I should have taken the high road and stopped to read your tutorial then, I guess.  My bad; it was late and I was very tired. Water under the bridge?



I could've taken the higher road as well. Even though I try not to bring it to the forums, I have a fiery, competitive personality that sometimes bleeds through in a non-competitive atmosphere. Even so, I never felt any hostility toward you and looked at the situation as more of a misunderstanding. Though, I still felt you should have handled/prepared for this thread differently prior to making it. So, I wasn't exactly going to give any free passes. Its all good though.

On the note about mindfulness...mindfulness deals with spirituality, self discovery, etc. All that nonsense is left out of ADA, this is simply for lucid dreaming. There are many differences in the mindset that you have going into ADA. In the way it was designed, its made specifically for lucid dreaming and is 100% effective. I have yet to go 1-on-1 with a dreamer that didn't have success with the technique. 





> I hope so   I know Sageous has spent considerable time answering my questions and numerous other's questions and I see that KingYoshi has answered numerous questions as well over the years. They have that in common: attempting to help others on their quest for regular lucidity. I have not practiced ADA or at least not as described in the OP but I would like to add that further debate on this could potentially come to a consensus on what will help those seeking regular lucid dreams. Most methods related to ADA, awareness, mindfulness, etc, require a good amount of time and dedication and it would be good to know if they are beneficial to lucid dreaming if that is all that someone is looking for in practicing the methods.



It IS very beneficial. Like I previously stated, I have yet to go 1 on 1 with a dreamer who has not had success with ADA. If you have any problems while practicing the technique, come to me, and I guarantee you we will hammer out success. This thing works. I've proven it with my own success as well as the success of the countless dreamers in my thread and in my PM box. Its not like something that is on the fence about whether it works or not, which is why I see no point in this thread. It works. Period.

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## Sageous

> It IS very beneficial. Like I previously stated, I have yet to go 1 on 1 with a dreamer who has not had success with ADA. If you have any problems while practicing the technique, come to me, and I guarantee you we will hammer out success. This thing works. I've proven it with my own success as well as the success of the countless dreamers in my thread and in my PM box. Its not like something that is on the fence about whether it works or not, which is why I see no point in this thread. It works. Period.



Okay, then let's try to give the thread a point.  Assuming that we all accept that your ADA technique works, can you, per Meskhetyw's suggestion above, tell us why you think it works?  Maybe then we can get to the core of what works/what doesn't work, and what mental processes are involved... okay, we might at least head for that core!

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## tofur

yoshi whats your take on spontaneous lucidity?  where there's no apparent lead up to it in terms of heightened awareness, you go from ordinary dream consciousness to awake in the dream randomly and for no obvious reason.  What do you think is responsible for that?  are most of your dilds like that?

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## KingYoshi

Ok, quickly before the Braves game starts. I'm going to include excerpts from the written technique as well. Simply because it is faster. I'll go ahead and go into in-depth, "guru" mode since you guys are twisting my arm  :tongue2: . I usually don't got this in-depth outside of a PM question/assistance or my actual thread. You bastards j/k  :tongue2: .

*ADA for achieving lucidity*: 
_"If you don't have good awareness in waking life, how do you expect to have good awareness in your dreams?"

"At first, you will have to force yourself to be completely aware of your surroundings. The idea, is to try and become aware of absolutely EVERYTHING around you. After practicing ADA for a while, you will start to become aware of theses subtleties without forcing yourself. As you practice more and more, you will notice the subtleties being noticed quite naturally with little effort. Eventually, you will get to where you are no longer practicing All Day Awareness, you are actually living it. It will become natural for you. Once you have reached this level of awareness, the dream itself becomes your dream sign. Every thing you notice within the dream will become your RC."_

Building awareness of your surroundings in waking life carries over into the dream state. So, once you get to the point that you are practicing ADA regularly and naturally, the same is going to happen in your dreams. Sageous, you stated earlier that everyone already has awareness in their dreams. While that is partially true, their level of awareness is the same in their dreams as in waking life. In waking life, if you look at a wall and simply see the wall in the "take it for granted" sense, then you are going to do the same in your dream. In an actual dream, however, that wall is nothing more than a creation of your mind. It can be solid, liquid, gas, or nothing at all, because it is truly nothing but a thought. With ADA, you get out of this "day walking" by increasing your awareness in waking life. You are noticing everything and recognizing that wall for what it truly is. Your mind learns "this wall is a wall BECAUSE I am in reality right now" without even thinking specifically about. Your entire environment is becoming your RC. Not just walls, but everything around you. In a dream, once you increase that awareness, your environment is not going to "feel" the same. Nothing around you is grounded in reality and you are training yourself to notice this difference. This isn't something that can be found in books or even in the knowledge of your average genius. Its something that only a lucid dreamer can understand. Its abstract and needs to be experienced to fully understand what I mean when I say "it feels like a dream." ADA provides that ability. I've been at this for a long time and not in the same sense as most, as I have been using this in the specialty format (recreational lucid dreaming only). I don't doubt there are other benefits for mindfulness and awareness, but I'm purposely not allowing my body or mind to take advantage of these benefits or even acknowledge them for that matter. This, I 100% believe, is the key to being permanently lucid. 

Day walking excerpt for those who don't know/understand my terminology: 
_"Lets take for instance, you are walking your dog down the street. Be aware of everything around you. Hear your footsteps against the pavement, feel the cushion in the sole of your shoes contract with each step. Feel the muscles working in your legs as you stroll along, see your eyelids blinking, hear the sound of your breathing, feel your lungs expanding and your chest moving as you breath in and out. Smell the air as you travel through the neighborhood. Does it change? Does every breeze smell the exact same? Feel your tongue as it casually rests on the bottom of your mouth. Every structure around you has a shadow...do you notice them? Hear the pitter patter of the dogs feet, do you hear him panting? Most people hold the leash and walk down the sidewalk completely lost in their thoughts. Most don't even notice the control they are using to power their own legs.

You are sitting at the computer doing math homework. Feel the keys below your fingertips, notice how effortlessly your fingers fly from one key to the next without even having to think about the upcoming letter/keystroke. While you were reading the previous two sentences, did you take for granted the blinking process. What all sounds have you heard while you have been reading this tutorial? What does the air smell like? You shouldn't have to smell right now to answer the question. Have you noticed the shadows of everything around you? How about your lungs? Have you noticed them expanding and your chest moving. Have you noticed the air traveling up through your windpipe, across your tongue and passed your lips?

These are just a few of the millions of small details that the average person takes for granted or doesn't even bother to notice. It is almost like everyone is sleep walking while they are awake. If you don't have good awareness in waking life, how do you expect to have good awareness in your dreams?"_ 

*ADA for Recall*:
_"Not only does awareness help strive toward lucidity, but it also helps with recall. As you continue to practice ADA, it will start to carry over in your dreams. Even if you aren't getting lucid yet, you will start paying more attention to the dream environment. Making mental notes of what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. This will help make dreams much easier to recall upon waking up from sleep. It will also help you recall more details from your dream. Soon you will be having detailed journal entries that read almost like a story as opposed to a scattered series of events that jump around from place to place."_

Increasing awareness in waking life increases awareness in your dream, we have established that. If you are naturally paying more attention to the dream and noticing things around you, you are implanting those memories and things you notice more firmly into your mind. Upon waking up, your increased awareness in that previous dream has provided you with enhanced recall. Think about it like this, you are at a bar, drunk, and sleepy. Your awareness is going to be shit. As soon as you walk outside you write down everything you remember about the table of people right beside you who didn't interact with. You are going to remember almost nothing. Now, the same thing happens to a sober guy who is a normal human and "day walking" like the rest of the population. He is probably going to recall a bit more than the drunk guy, but maybe not. Now, take a guy who was in the bar practicing ADA the entire time. He is going to have an enormous advantage in recall of that table if he was, in fact, practicing ADA correctly. Ridiculous amounts of detail are possible. The brain is powerful enough to have photographic memory and store those memories. Not saying ADA is going to give you photographic memory, but it is, 100%, going to enhance recall.

*ADA for Dream Control*:

Take everything you have read and keep it in mind as I speak here. Your awareness has increased from ADA practice, therefore your mind understands much better than a typical dreamer that these things in your dreams, all of these things around you are nothing but creations of your mind. The better you get at ADA the more your mind naturally understands and accepts these things. This allows the success rate of your techniques for dream manipulation to blast through the roof. Most dreamers look at something and say, "Its a dream so I can control this with my mind." Saying it and even thinking it, is not the same as truly 100% believing it and expecting it. So, while at times it does work to say something out loud and use another similar trick to get dream control to work, ADA improves the root of why these tricks work. With ADA, instead of saying these things, your training your brain to know and 100% understand these things at all times. It helps boost those little tips and tricks that we all use to manipulate the dream (without us even noticing why things are working better and more frequently). ADA doesn't help provide better tricks, it helps increase the effectiveness of ALL tricks. My dream control and recall and at a much higher level these days than before I started ADA. You can see the impact that ADA made on my dreams by looking through my old dream journal from beginning to end (not recommended, it is A LOT of dreams, but you can take my word for it  :tongue2: ).

*ADA for prolonging the dream experience, staying lucid & stabilization*:

The number one way to prolong a lucid dream (aside from time dilation/manipulation if you believe in that), is staying immersed within the dream state and keeping "disconnected" from your actual body. If you have advanced awareness, you are always going to be more locked-in to the dream environment than someone who doesn't. Your awareness and ADA carries into this dream state and keeps you constantly involved in dream activity, because noticing your environment better IS dream activity. On top of that, your awareness boost allows you to keep a much firmer grip on your lucidity. If you have great awareness from ADA practice, you are going to be "feeling" the dream at all times. You are "resonating" with your environment and experience as you are exploring your dream. Its much harder to forget you are lucid even while playing into the "dreams hands." By this, I am referring to my own style of dream exploration. I'm always playing along with my dream plots and treating the dream world as if it is another alternate, true life (even though I don't believe this or get into BD aspects). This allows for my dreams to play out as more coherent adventures and create consistencies from dream to dream. Making it possible to continue dream plots and overarching stories from dream to dream. Its why my DJ is set-up in dream series' (kind of like tv series') and I'm able to create an epic that spans across many dreams.

Stabilization is nothing more than a form of dream control. So, see dream control for why it also helps boost stabilization.

Now, you aren't going to start ADA and immediately become a dream master, but you WILL notice results soon. The better you get at ADA and the more natural you become at performing it, the better it will help in all of these areas. If you can get to the point that you are in a constant All Day Awareness state of mind, you will become forever lucid. That is my goal, but I'm a long way from that.

Edit: @tofur - even for someone who doesn't practice ADA, they can randomly "feel" that dream state. It just feels like they are in a dream, so they realize they are. You don't even notice this most of the time, your mind has experience the waking state and dream state your whole life. You are walking around and, BAM your lucid for no reason. Well, whether you realize it or not, your mind figured out it was a dream simply because it knew it wasn't reality. ADA and awareness helps to make this a regular thing. Almost all of my DILDs are because I just suddenly know I'm in a dream for no other apparent reason than that "this feels like a dream." Everyone has the ability to just randomly become lucid, its how many of us became lucid without prior knowledge to what lucid dreaming even was.

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## Zoth

> On the note about mindfulness...mindfulness deals with spirituality, self discovery, etc. All that nonsense is left out of ADA



You should try doing some research before stating things like that. They couldn't be more far than the truth. As I stated before, I do think the technique works, but I'm more interested on why it works, and I thought that was what we were discussing.

Besides, let's clear one thing here:

It's not quite simple to determine the cause for lucidity in a DILD. In fact, it can be many times impossible. Spontaneous lucidity  isn't something random: it actually refers to things like insight, some memory or event altering your perspective, and this doesn't need to happen in a conscious level. The areas of the brain active during a lucid dream don't turn themselves "on" just because.





> Your awareness has increased from ADA practice, therefore your mind understands much better than a typical dreamer that these things in your dreams, all of these things around you are nothing but creations of your mind.



What are we defining as awareness here?





> Sageous, you stated earlier that everyone already has awareness in their dreams. While that is partially true, their level of awareness is the same in their dreams as in waking life.



No it's not. You can't define awareness as a constant degree of sensory perception. Or if we are talking about other meaning for awareness, it is isn't constant or immutable. 





> Upon waking up, your increased awareness in that previous dream has provided you with enhanced recall.



Completely disagree. The fact that you don't remember your dreams is not because you aren't aware of them. Notice that I was the person who mentioned "better recall" with ADA, but you don't backup your argument with anything that seems valid.





> Not saying ADA is going to give you photographic memory, but it is, 100%, going to enhance recall.



How do you know it's not other factor? Your topic seems full of assumptions based on anecdotal evidence. There's no harm in believing something, but being 100% sure? Hmmm....

I hope you don't view this reply as a personal attack King Yoshi, because the only interest I have in this thread is healthy discussion (even if it means you and I are going to disagree fiercely), but your position seems to rely on assumptions based on your experience.

On the other hand, I might be talking like we're all a bunch of scientists that forgot to test their techniques in the laboratory....I must say that I can't help but think that the majority of lucid dreaming techniques that are invented might even work, but why? No one knows lol, because besides the old techniques like MILD, reality checks, visualization, tholey method, none of the others were actually tested.

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## KingYoshi

> You should try doing some research before stating things like that. They couldn't be more far than the truth.
> 
> Besides, let's clear one thing here:
> 
> It's not quite simple to determine the cause for lucidity in a DILD. In fact, it can be many times impossible. Spontaneous lucidity  isn't something random: it actually refers to things like insight, some memory or event altering your perspective, and this doesn't need to happen in a conscious level. The areas of the brain active during a lucid dream don't turn themselves "on" just because.



See, I don't need to do the research because it has already been done. Its already up here (points at head). Long before these new age lucid dreamers. I've been here for a long time and been doing this for a long time, so slow down young one. THE definition of mindfulness' first line = "Mindfulness (Pali: sati,[1] Sanskrit: smṛti; also translated as awareness) is a spiritual or psychological faculty (indriya) that, according to the teaching of the Buddha, is considered to be of great importance in the path to enlightenment ."

Its a Buddhist practice that I am SUPER familiar with. Whether your view of mindfulness is different from this, is none of my concern. Do not tell me I'm wrong because your version of mindfulness is different from the definition, lol. I don't believe in enlightenment, beings, or any spiritual things so I'm not going to go into mindfulness with you. I know what it is, and to me, everything except for its basic awareness is crap. Not saying its impossible, but I'm not into. I don't judge anyone who is and I still hold respect for them. I'm into things that other aren't so I understand.

As for your second part, WTF are you talking about? Of course it isn't random. Are you even reading my posts? Your mind is not randomly becoming lucid, it is feeling that you are in a dream as opposed to lucidity, whether you realize it or not. Your mind can distinguish reality from a dream, naturally. ADA helps you do this even more often. Its not random and nothing I ever said implied that I thought it was. C'mon Dream Guide.

Edit: Look Zoth, if you want to know what kind of awareness I'm talking about, GO READ MY TUTORIAL. It is explained in great detail. I just explained in great detail why and how ADA helps with recall and it IS awareness. Have you been practicing testing and experimenting with ADA in direct correlation to lucid dreaming for years? Do you have 100s and 100s of lucid dreams from using no other technique but ADA? This isn't nonsense I'm spitting, dude. This is research and experience. 

No one knows why these techniques work? LOL. Sorry, bro, YOU don't know why they work. DOn't speak for everyone else. I get people lucid because I don't just tell them what to do, I explain why these things work. I don't lucid dream blindly, I figure out why something works and test it over and over and over again. No offense to the other DGs, but how in the fuck did you become a Dream Guide? This is coming from a former Dream Guide Leader. Sad.

Also, you discredited my statements that had backing and didn't even provide a reason. You said, "The fact that you don't remember your dreams is not because you aren't aware of them." And that is it, LMAO. Because you say it makes it true, even without explaining why? Who do you think you are? You are in the most important position on the site, as a Dream Guide, and you are sitting here spitting ridiculous nonsense as if you are a random noob troll? Wow, dude. Wow.

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## Zoth

> so slow down young one



Don't take this personally, but let's abstain from these particular comments, either directed to me, any other member, or even you. This is valid for everyone in this thread to make sure the discussion doesn't turn into a flaming war. Thanks  :smiley: 





> See, I don't need to do the research because it has already been done. I've been here for a long time and been doing this for a long time, so slow down young one. THE definition of mindfulness' first line = "Mindfulness (Pali: sati,[1] Sanskrit: smṛti; also translated as awareness) is a spiritual or psychological faculty (indriya) that, according to the teaching of the Buddha, is considered to be of great importance in the path to enlightenment ."



You're linking wikipedia as an argument for research? When I say research, I actually mean going beyond googling mindfulness. It isn't necessarily linked to spirituality. But you seem to only know the concept of mindfulness related to it. Once again, I encourage you to do some research  :smiley: 





> it is feeling that you are in a dream as opposed to lucidity, whether you realize it or not.



So you know it in an unconscious level? How do you backup this claim of yours? What is this feeling? Your mind knows it is a dream, but you don't? Then how do you know it knows?

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## Sageous

Should I mention that I'm in my 50's, and have been actively LD'ing -- and researching it from more sources than my head -- for probably longer than you've been alive, King Yoshi?  And I swear Zoth is older than me sometimes!  We're not all kids here, and to me the "New Age" happened in the late '70's, so you might want to grab another term, so as not to confuse us old farts...

Sorry, Zoth; just sayin'

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## JoannaB

Actually, I know exactly what KingYoshi is talking about when he talks of this feeling that it is a dream, even though rationally you may not have quite realized it yet. It's like you have noticed stuff, which adds up to it being a dream, but you have not added up all the parts yet, and so if someone asked you why did you know it was a dream when you did, you might not be able to explain it, but of course there were reasons because you noticed stuff that only made sense as a dream.

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## KingYoshi

> Don't take this personally, but let's abstain from these particular comments, either directed to me, any other member, or even you. This is valid for everyone in this thread to make sure the discussion doesn't turn into a flaming war. Thanks 
> 
> 
> 
> You're linking wikipedia as an argument for research? When I say research, I actually mean going beyond googling mindfulness. It isn't necessarily linked to spirituality. But you seem to only know the concept of mindfulness related to it. Once again, I encourage you to do some research 
> 
> 
> 
> So you know it in an unconscious level? How do you backup this claim of yours? What is this feeling? Your mind knows it is a dream, but you don't? Then how do you know it knows?



I know my mind knows because I have felt it. I have been living and breathing ADA and everything about it in regard to lucid dreaming for years. You haven't so you clearly do not understand the feeling of being in a completely normal dream when your mind begins to "feel" the dream and you become lucid. The dream state feels different in every sense than waking life once you get deep into ADA. How do I know? Because I am doing it and have been doing. Ask the 100s of dreamers that have become lucid from ADA. Everything I know about lucid dreaming including mindfulness aspects, come from experience. As in, I, personally, explore and researched these things from WITHIN THE DREAM. I didn't READ IT and assume it to be true. Do some research? How about you do some REAL research. As in, field research. As in, becoming lucid and explore these things from the source. Not reading what everyone else has written and suddenly claiming it to be true. Dreaming is not fact. There is NO written material from anyone that I will believe until lI prove it myself from with the dream world. Go do some REAL research rookie. 

I love how you are trying to act responsible now that you are called out on your incompetence as a Dream Guide. This is no flame, its actually very disheartening to me.





> Should I mention that I'm in my 50's, and have been actively LD'ing -- and researching it from more sources than my head -- for probably longer than you've been alive, King Yoshi?  And I swear Zoth is older than me sometimes!  We're not all kids here, and to me the "New Age" happened in the late '70's, so you might want to grab another term, so as not to confuse us old farts...
> 
> Sorry, Zoth; just sayin'



I'm clearly not talking to or about you. I know how old you are and how experienced you are. So, save these useless comments for the birds. New Age for lucid dreaming was not in the 70's in my eyes. Yours maybe, but not mine. So, I stand by it. And Zoth, is ignorant. Period. Not unintelligent, not stupid, but ignorant by its intended definition. Not by the insult.

How is a source other than your own experience within the dream, even valid to you? You seriously listen to someone talk about lucid dreaming and believe them without testing their knowledge or at the very least, testing how their knowledge could be true? Sorry, but my head is all I need for sources on lucid dreaming. If you think that is wrong, tell that to the 100s of dreamers who have used my experience along the way.

----------


## tofur

Ron Burgundy - That Escalated Quickly - YouTube

----------


## JoannaB

I think this thread suffers from the too many egos in one place problem, which is a shame because the topic is of great interest, and we have some smart people here who are deeply committed to helping others and getting it right. And the egos get in the way. Sigh.

----------


## tofur

> Actually, I know exactly what KingYoshi is talking about when he talks of this feeling that it is a dream, even though rationally you may not have quite realized it yet. It's like you have noticed stuff, which adds up to it being a dream, but you have not added up all the parts yet, and so if someone asked you why did you know it was a dream when you did, you might not be able to explain it, but of course there were reasons because you noticed stuff that only made sense as a dream.



see but what I don't get is, what is that "you" that hasn't added it all up yet, the "you" that is noticing stuff?  I feel like were talking about two different aspects of consciousness here, the part that is witnessing everything, and the other part that wakes up because of the witnessing.  So maybe what were doing with the awareness training is stabilizing ourselves more and more as that witness, the observer rather than the doer.

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## KingYoshi

> Should I mention that I'm in my 50's, and have been actively LD'ing -- and researching it from more sources than my head -- for probably longer than you've been alive, King Yoshi?  And I swear Zoth is older than me sometimes!  We're not all kids here, and to me the "New Age" happened in the late '70's, so you might want to grab another term, so as not to confuse us old farts...
> 
> Sorry, Zoth; just sayin'







> see but what I don't get is, what is that "you" that hasn't added it all up yet, the "you" that is noticing stuff?  I feel like were talking about two different aspects of consciousness here, the part that is witnessing everything, and the other part that wakes up because of the witnessing.  So maybe what were doing with the awareness training is stabilizing ourselves more and more as that witness, the observer rather than the doer.



More like bringing them together as one. The mind is complex and very abstract. Its hard to describe these things with words. Its more of a feeling.

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## Sageous

Sorry JoannaB, I go one more ego burst, as the following must be said:





> I'm clearly not talking to or about you. I know how old you are and how experienced you are. So, save these useless comments for the birds. New Age for lucid dreaming was not in the 70's in my eyes. Yours maybe, but not mine. So, I stand by it. And Zoth, is ignorant. Period. Not unintelligent, not stupid, but ignorant by its intended definition. Not by the insult.



 You'd think I would have learned my lesson yesterday... okay, Yoshi, I promise to no longer toss your way any snarky comments, sarcasm, or anything even suggesting humor or -- God forgive me -- speaking to you as an equal.  In other words I promise not to speak to you as you do to us, as you seem to take it very poorly.  You spoke as if you were speaking to all of us, BTW, not so clearly at all. 



> How is a source other than your own experience within the dream, even valid to you? You seriously listen to someone talk about lucid dreaming and believe them without testing their knowledge or at the very least, testing how their knowledge could be true? Sorry, but my head is all I need for sources on lucid dreaming. If you think that is wrong, tell that to the 100s of dreamers who have used my experience along the way.



Did I say I believe everything I read? Did I say I never test new knowledge against my experience? I don't think so.  And, if getting knowledge from places other than your head is no good, why are you here? Surely those 100's of satisfied dreamers should have learned on their own, right? 

Sorry again for the interruption, folks; hopefully we can get back to work now.

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## fogelbise

> I think this thread suffers from the too many egos in one place problem, which is a shame because the topic is of great interest, and we have some smart people here who are deeply committed to helping others and getting it right. And the egos get in the way. Sigh.



I think the thread got back on the right track and is currently only slightly limping. Discussion of Tofur's question could also further right the ship. This is where I felt Zoth was coming from:





> I hope you don't view this reply as a personal attack King Yoshi, because the only interest I have in this thread is healthy discussion (even if it means you and I are going to disagree fiercely), but your position seems to rely on assumptions based on your experience.

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## melanieb

Already taken care of, and please keep snarky comments out of this thread.   :smiley:

----------


## JoannaB

Examples of similar phenomenon to dream "feeling":

Some mothers can tell by their baby's cry whether it is hungry or wet or whatever. They may not be able to describe the difference to you, and may not know what they notice, but they do.

Experienced fishkeepers can watch an aquarium, and can tell that there may be a water quality issue. If asked to describe it to you, they may be able to say a few things like that the fish were not acting like they usually do, but they might not be able to describe it well because it is more about the overall observation of the tank where after watching the tank carefully for many years, they just can tell. What they observe may include fish moving about more or less, less frisky, fish being a different shade of color / less shiny, aquatic plants not looking healthy, fish breathing more heavily, etc., but they may not be able to tell you each of those things they observed, but rather might say that the aquarium looked like it does when the water quality is wrong.

Sometimes you can tell someone else is lying, but might be hard pressed to tell why, but some people are good at this. They of course must be observing things like maybe hesitancy in the other's voice, maybe sweating, maybe fidgeting, maybe not making eye contact, but they may or may not be able to enumerate these observations to you, but instead will say they just knew he was lying.

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## tofur

> Examples of similar phenomenon to dream "feeling":
> 
> Some mothers can tell by their baby's cry whether it is hungry or wet or whatever. They may not be able to describe the difference to you, and may not know what they notice, but they do.
> 
> Experienced fishkeepers can watch an aquarium, and can tell that there may be a water quality issue. If asked to describe it to you, they may be able to say a few things like that the fish were not acting like they usually do, but they might not be able to describe it well because it is more about the overall observation of the tank where after watching the tank carefully for many years, they just can tell. What they observe may include fish moving about more or less, less frisky, fish being a different shade of color / less shiny, aquatic plants not looking healthy, fish breathing more heavily, etc., but they may not be able to tell you each of those things they observed, but rather might say that the aquarium looked like it does when the water quality is wrong.
> 
> Sometimes you can tell someone else is lying, but might be hard pressed to tell why, but some people are good at this. They of course must be observing things like maybe hesitancy in the other's voice, maybe sweating, maybe fidgeting, maybe not making eye contact, but they may or may not be able to enumerate these observations to you, but instead will say they just knew he was lying.



sounds like intuition to me, maybe someone who's more intuitive by nature is more adept at LD'ing, picks it up quicker with less effort?

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## JoannaB

I am not sure that intuition is right. It's got more to do with careful observation and noticing details on a not entirely conscious level which someone else would have missed but the experienced observer does not. And that's why ADA and dream feeling go hand in hand because when one trains oneself to be an experienced observer, one learns to notice stuff others would have missed. And the things one notices may be stuff like that gravity is not exactly the same or that you passed the same person three times. And I am not suggesting here that in dreams we do not render stuff perfectly because we can, but sometimes we might not. And I think an experienced ADA practitioner will train him- or herself to notice things so that if anything is off in a way that might be due to dream, then some part of their mind notices it. And it may be something different every time that they notice, and it most likely will be a combination of stuff. And while one's mind is capable of flawlessly reproducing reality in dreams, but sometimes it does not, or it will reproduce some details but not others. And the trained observer's mind will recognize that, and while you could say it will recognize these things off "intuitively" but I don't think there is any sixth sense involved and I do believe with ADA anyone can learn to do this though it would require a lot of effort.

Edit: the sad thing is that I think I used to have this ability. At least I remember recognizing dreams as dreams by this kind of "feeling" twenty years ago. Why oh why did I give this up? I want to regain this. I need to concentrate more on ADA.

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## Sageous

I think JoannaB and King Yoshi have this pegged, but I had an additional thought:





> see but what I don't get is, what is that "you" that hasn't added it all up yet, the "you" that is noticing stuff?  I feel like were talking about two different aspects of consciousness here, the part that is witnessing everything, and the other part that wakes up because of the witnessing.  So maybe what were doing with *the awareness training is stabilizing ourselves more and more as that witness, the observer rather than the doer.*



That may be exactly my problem with "natural" awareness training, because driving you to become just a witness may be an unintended and unwanted side-effect of awareness-only training.  

Yes, becoming only that witness makes the dream world more stable, but it also makes it more _real,_ and your dream less lucid.  As King Yoshi said, you must remember that the observer part of you and the witness part of you (and the dreaming mind part of you, for that matter) are all you, and must be smoothly combined into one self-aware "You."  If you only witness, then you sacrifice the union of all aspects of "You," and risk lapsing back into a NLD or waking up.

_However:_





> sounds like intuition to me, maybe someone who's more intuitive by nature is more adept at LD'ing, picks it up quicker with less effort?



I think of it less natural intuition than a "sense" built into your consciousness that can sort of put it all together, at least at a very low, almost subliminal level.  This sense need not be natural; indeed, I have a feeling that, except in children, this sense is far more often artificially infused through training than it is natural. 

Perhaps that is the real value of ADA, as it both teaches you to have a special sense of your surroundings while, thanks to the constant practice with LD'ing in mind, building powerful expectations of having LD's.  So, come dreamtime, your unconscious is already hard at work fulfilling your expectations while your ADA "habit" has got your DC "you" paying slightly elevated attention.  Then, once the "feeling" is in place, your self-awareness and memory kick in and Bam!, you're lucid.

Hmm... Did I just turn back on myself to accidentally summarize the real value of ADA as LD'ing tool? Seems to all make sense...or am I just babbling?

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## KingYoshi

> I think JoannaB's and King Yoshi have this pegged, but I had an additional thought:
> 
> 
> 
> That may be exactly my problem with "natural" awareness training, because driving you to become just a witness may be an unintended and unwanted side-effect of awareness-only training.  
> 
> Yes, becoming only that witness makes the dream world more stable, but it also makes it more _real,_ and your dream less lucid.  As King Yoshi said, you must remember that the observer part of you and the witness part of you (and the dreaming mind part of you, for that matter) are all you, and must be smoothly combined into one self-aware "You."  If you only witness, then you sacrifice the union of all aspects of "You," and risk lapsing back into a NLD or waking up.
> 
> _However:_
> ...



I know how, but I don't understand why the argument got escalated in the first place because its not like we are THAT far off from looking at this the same way. This sounds like you are getting it and made valid statements. As for the "more real" part you mentioned, that doesn't mean you have to be less lucid. I don't get into BD, but I simply pretend as if the dream state is another reality (to an extent). By using the dream world to my advantage, I'm able to accomplish my goals and hold on to my lucidity no matter how real it seems. The ADA helps you know its a dream and hold on to your lucidity even if you aren't actively trying to remember this fact. I'm not saying its a magical cure for every dream problem, but it helps out and boosts in a ridiculous amount of areas. These days, it is the only technique I use for lucid dreaming besides DJing. Not counting DEILD chains, of course. I'm not saying its for everyone, but there is no way it can be detrimental to lucid dreaming.

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## Sageous

^^ The evidence is definitely leaning, for me, in the "undetrimental" direction.  But I'm still of the mind that there is a hazard to having ADA be the _only_ tool in your belt ... Keep in mind, King Yoshi, that given your experience, you already very likely have a whole beltful of tools on hand (ie, that "feeling" we were all just discussing).  

In other words, I'm coming to the conclusion that ADA can be a powerful tool for LD'ing but, like all powerful tools it needs to be handled well and plugged into something... which I think you just said.

Holy crap, are we in some sort of agreement here? Were we _always_ in some sort of agreement? Communication is a helluva thing, isn't it?


 ::cheers::

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## KingYoshi

> ^^ The evidence is definitely leaning, for me, in the "undetrimental" direction.  But I'm still of the mind that there is a hazard to having ADA be the _only_ tool in your belt ... Keep in mind, King Yoshi, that given your experience, you already very likely have a whole beltful of tools on hand (ie, that "feeling" we were all just discussing).  
> 
> In other words, I'm coming to the conclusion that ADA can be a powerful tool for LD'ing but, like all powerful tools it needs to be handled well and plugged into something... which I think you just said.
> 
> Holy crap, are we in some sort of agreement here? Were we _always_ in some sort of agreement? Communication is a helluva thing, isn't it?



Well, I can agree about the numerous tools. I tell newbies all the time to soak up as much quality information as possible and never be afraid to experiment with other's techniques and mold them to fit their own mind. That feeling though, came from ADA practice. I didn't really have it regularly before, I suppose as much as any other LDer who get spontaneously lucid. The feeling comes from ADA practice and grows with your experience with the technique. I'm also able to WILD very well amongst other things, so my mind has gotten used to lucidity much more than the average user on this site (though still less than some, of course). I'm not saying it should be your only technique, but I'll always recommend it as the foundation for lucid practice. 

We were always in some sort of agreement, not from the beginning, but after the first misunderstanding anyway. Some became distracted by perceived arrogance and lost sight of the matter at hand. While another probably milked it a bit after noticing that frustration to clear some of their own frustrations. It happens. There is a saying my buddies and I always had growing up, "I'm not cocky, just confident." Of course, it was said in a jokingly misleading manner, but the statement was always true.

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## CosmicIron

After reading through all the posts, I cannot shake the feeling that some people are making too many assumptions without evaluating them carefully. For example, the assumption that one gains lucidty by spotting oddities in dreams. As I mentioned in my previous post, it appears that LDs triggered in this fashion are actually relatively rare. Moreover, in dreams we don't often possess the full memories, reasoning skills, and even personalities as in waking state. In fact it is not unusual for us to act like another person in dreams. This is actually not surprising because dreams are the language of the unconscious. Often than not the dream ego itself gets assigned symbolic meanings and act according to some predetermined plots. In this case, to the dream ego, there are no oddities in the dreams, just like how our waking ego perceive the so-called real world. Granted there are times our dream ego become detached from dream plots and act independently similar to the awakened state, but that's not the majority. 

That is but one of the many examples which led me to question the validity of some of the theories we take for granted. Again I'm not drawing conclusions but I'm kinda hoping this thread will provoke people to think outside of the boxes. Lucid dreams are triggered/improved by awareness, and since some technique improves awareness it ought to work for lucid dreams -- we have heard this line way too many times and it is not even worth repeating or defending anymore IMHO.

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## KingYoshi

> After reading through all the posts, I cannot shake the feeling that some people are making too many assumptions without evaluating them carefully. For example, the assumption that one gains lucidty by spotting oddities in dreams. As I mentioned in my previous post, it appears that LDs triggered in this fashion are actually relatively rare.



I agree with this. ADA isn't about spotting oddities at all. Its about creating the awareness to distinguish between the waking state and the dream state, simply because they are not the same as each other. Its about building up a mental "feeling" that causes you to realize you are dreaming simply because you are not awake. I can't think of a better word to describe it because you don't physically feel it, but you kind of get washed over with lucidity. Still not a good way to describe it. Its very hard to put into words for someone who hasn't experienced it before to understand. The best thing I can tell you is to try ADA, specifically for lucid dreaming, so you can experience it for yourself. I do seem to just randomly become lucid, but its a constant thing and I find myself looking at a completely normal environment and thinking to myself, "This is a dream. This feels like a dream." Even if nothing out of the ordinary has happened the entire time. Its not just a sporadic event either, this is how I become lucid 15-20 times per month, on average (a complete guesstimation). It started happening more and more frequently after I started practicing ADA. 

I'm not sure you were referring to me with the assumptions thing, but I thought you might be, so figured I'd say this. I don't say these things because I have heard them, I say them because I have experienced them and have helped countless others experience them.

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## Sageous

I've had uncounted DILD's over the last 4 decades, and I can safely say that I never became lucid thanks to a dream-sign, RC, or other technique related shortcut.  It used to drive me nuts when people would say, "This is all you gotta do," when I knew, in my experience at least, you needed something else.  I call it self-awareness, King Yoshi calls it a feeling, CosmicIron calls it awareness, but regardless it is a conscous state of "more," and one technique alone just won't cut it.

I blame all this on Stephen LaBerge, BTW, who accidentally popularlized shortcuts like dreamsigns, spotting oddities, and RC's when he published his MILD technique.... but they were only part of a fairly elaborate technique that included much daytime work.  Now that I think of it, though LaBerge was desperate for that shortcut, that one step to lucidity, he still hasn't found it... but oh, the trail of debris he has left in his path!

I'm not making any sense -- too tired tonight -- suffice it to say, CosmicIron, that I do agree that any single tool is not the answer, and I also agree that the popular view has come so firmly to believe that a single tool is all you need for lucidity -- just pick one, and you're there.  I fear, King Yoshi, that ADA -- through no fault of your own -- has joined the ranks of those perceived single-tool answers.

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## CosmicIron

> I agree with this. ADA isn't about spotting oddities at all. Its about creating the awareness to distinguish between the waking state and the dream state, simply because they are not the same as each other. Its about building up a mental "feeling" that causes you to realize you are dreaming simply because you are not awake. I can't think of a better word to describe it because you don't physically feel it, but you kind of get washed over with lucidity. Still not a good way to describe it. Its very hard to put into words for someone who hasn't experienced it before to understand. The best thing I can tell you is to try ADA, specifically for lucid dreaming, so you can experience it for yourself. I do seem to just randomly become lucid, but its a constant thing and I find myself looking at a completely normal environment and thinking to myself, "This is a dream. This feels like a dream." Even if nothing out of the ordinary has happened the entire time. Its not just a sporadic event either, this is how I become lucid 15-20 times per month, on average (a complete guesstimation). It started happening more and more frequently after I started practicing ADA. 
> 
> I'm not sure you were referring to me with the assumptions thing, but I thought you might be, so figured I'd say this. I don't say these things because I have heard them, I say them because I have experienced them and have helped countless others experience them.



No I wasn't referring to you at all, Sageous. As for the sudden feeling that one is in a dream and thus become lucid, I suspect it has more to do with psychology than awareness. I can't provide evidence yet and it is difficult to describe for me in English which is my second language. Speaking from personal experience though I honestly do not see awareness playing a key role in gaining lucidity. If awareness is the flame, then lucidity is the spark. The point of dream yoga is not to build awareness so one can achieve lucidity, but rather, to use lucidity as a path to reach awareness at a totally different level. I have not practiced ADA per se but I have experimented with similar techniques so I can at least speak from personal experience without being totally ignorant or prejudiced. In past two decades I have had tens of thousands of lucid dreams and OBE experiences, large and small. They have enabled me to spot the subtle differences among the many states, and even much higher states of consciousness and awareness. Things like ADA, I fear, as you wrote in the very begining, are actually exercising the wrong kind of awareness for both lucid dreaming and spirituality.

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## JoannaB

Ok, it has occurred to me that a flaw with my explanation is that is is a justification: I am assuming that this "feeling" is due to a culmination of little observations of things not right combined together, but I do not actually know that for sure. Heck, maybe it is intuition or a sixth sense. However, logically I don't think so, and because of the waking life examples that I gave which I know are just based on experience of careful observation over time also, I know that this dream feeling is not a uniquely dream related phenomenon. All I really know though is that once you learn to be a trained observer in waking life, it does teach you to recognize the dream state in a way where you won't be able to pinpoint what exactly caused you to be lucid. My assumption that it is due to a combination of observes details that add up to it being a dream is an assumption. I do however firmly believe that even if it is "intuitition" it is something anyone can build up, it's an acquireable skill, which takes a lot of effort of observation practice/experience. I got to get seriously started on this effort again. I had been slacking. This thread has pretty much reminded me even more of what I used to have and forgot that I even had it and why I lost it, but it has motivated me some more to strive to regain this.

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## Sageous

*CosmicIron:*

A couple of quick clarifications/questions:





> No I wasn't referring to you at all, *Sageous*.



I assume you meant to write "King Yoshi" there, or was there a Freudian Slip involved?  :smiley: 





> As for the sudden feeling that one is in a dream and thus become lucid, I suspect it has more to do with psychology than awareness. I can't provide evidence yet and it is difficult to describe for me in English which is my second language. Speaking from personal experience though I honestly do not see awareness playing a key role in gaining lucidity. If awareness is the flame, then lucidity is the spark. The point of dream yoga is not to build awareness so one can achieve lucidity, but rather, to use lucidity as a path to reach awareness at a totally different level.



I'm not sure I'm clear on this.  From what I understand, lucidity _is_ awareness, being that a lucid dream is literally being aware that you are dreaming.  Yes the dream and sleep yogis use the minor awareness of lucidity to build toward a higher awareness of enlightenment and the transcendent self-awareness necessary to navigate the bardo, but that minor awareness is still awareness.  

So let's say I (and the dream and sleep yogis, and LaBerge & Co., and pretty much all of the people who write about lucidity) got it all wrong, and lucidity is not sourced in awareness/self-awareness: where then does it come from?  I'm not being aggressive or sarcastic here, though my phrasing might sound so; if you are onto something, or sure of a thing none of us understand, thanks to your experience, it might be a something well worth knowing. I hope you can elaborate.

If I misunderstood, please forgive!





> Things like ADA, I fear, as you wrote in the very beginning, are actually exercising the wrong kind of awareness for both lucid dreaming and spirituality.



 Though I am beginning to doubt that ADA as a _tool_ is harmful, I do still firmly believe that using ADA as your _only_ tool for lucidity will likely not give you lucidity.  

By way of circular definition: waking-life sentient consciousness, whether we call it self-awareness or a higher awareness, or that feeling, or intuition, or whatever, is necessary to have your waking-life sentient consciousness participate in a dream. The awareness powering ADA (meaning the simple physical awareness of our surroundings, no matter how thorough) is simply not enough on its own to achieve lucidity. ADA may offer some help, but it is not enough on its own. I think we all already agreed on that recently... didn't we?

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## EmptyBucket

Hello,

Noob lucid dreamer here(but motivated), just thought I'd throw in a thought and I hope it doesn't get in the way of this intense discussion, if so, just ignore me and move on.

But I do believe that self awareness is important in dreams because sometimes you worry or feel weird when something is really wrong in your dreams making you remember it more and only increases awareness

For instance I had a dream once that me and a friend I take the train to school with were at the station shooting people(I'm not a bad person  :wink2: ) and the cops showed up and I fear being taking away with the cops so I got so worried and hid in the dream, this was nonlucid since I new-ish and getting better. similar dreams are that you are late to work, having kids, forgot something important.

For this reason I feel self-awareness is important in achieving lucidity, but must be practiced a bit for the less extreme dreams you have I suppose. As for Yoshi's ADA, I feel as if it may only enhance the self-awareness technique.

Just my opinion, might be flat out stupid or obvious so again feel free to rule it out  ::sniper::

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## CosmicIron

> *CosmicIron:*
> I assume you meant to write "King Yoshi" there, or was there a Freudian Slip involved?



It could well be the later, LOL.




> I'm not being aggressive or sarcastic here, though my phrasing might sound so;



No worry, I can tell the difference between healthy discussion and hostile arguments.  :smiley:  Let me try to elaborate a little bit on the point I was trying to make. First on the subject of minor awareness sparking lucidity. Assuming this is true, and assuming such minor awareness can be gained upon the very earliest dreams in our sleep cycles, then we should be seeing much more frequent DILDs during the early part of sleep. Unfortunately this is not the case, even for experienced dreamers. 

Let's modify our second assumption -- maybe we do not gain such *minor* awareness until we reach the later stages of our sleeps. For this to be true, we have to also assume that we have little to nil awareness during the early part of our sleeps. However that is clearly not the case! That brings us to another hypothesis -- maybe there is some fundamental difference between the awareness that powers our early dreams and the awareness that's gained during the later stage? If this is the case, then for ADA and similar techs to work they have to exercise the later kind of awareness, not the former. 

Now what kind of awareness is this, exactly? One naive theory is that it's the kind of awareness we posses during the day. It assumes that we become lucid by becoming aware of the surroundings and somehow able to distinguish it from reality. Now we are back to square one because the ability to be aware of the surroundings certain existed during the early sleep stages as well. Another possibility is that we are talking about self-awareness. Basically that means we should know exactly who we are, where we were, and so on. This essentially means we replace our dream egos with the day-time ones, or, the "real" ones. (In Buddhism this is seen as a form of attachment, rather than enlightenment... just as a side note). Experienced WILDers or practitioners of astral projections know that upon entering a dream, no matter how conscious you are at the moment, that consciousness quickly diminishes and it takes great will power to maintain it. This is not surprising because just like everything else in the dream, our dream-self takes part in the dream plot and gets assigned certain symbolic meanings. It simply cannot be equal to our waking egos in order for dreams to function properly. The point I'm trying to make through this is that it takes a great deal for this type of detachment to occur, and even greater amount of effort is required to maintain it. As such, regardless of what it is -- awareness or not, there is nothing "minor" about it.

This kind of detachment do occur sometimes spontaneously though, and I suspect that's all part of the dream plot. A common scenario is that during intense nightmares people tend to either wake up, become lucid, take on a third-person perspective, or the dream itself turn into narrative form. My suspicion is that lucidity, in its more primitive form, is nothing but a built-in mechanism of our dreams, sort of like a safe switch. Sometimes it's for protection, and sometimes it's needed by the unconscious as part of the dream plot in order to tell its "stories". And this is what I meant by saying lucidity may have more to do with psychology than things such as "awareness". Granted there are exceptions, as demonstrated by our survey -- approximately less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence within the dreams. I feel that ADA and similar techs probably can help in this case, but do not serve as determining factors.

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## JoannaB

> approximately less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence within the dreams. I feel that ADA and similar techs probably can help in this case, but do not serve as determining factors.



I would argue with that statistic. I would say that all you can say is that less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence and knowing consciously in hindsight that that is what caused them to become lucid. My argument has been that I think that a very likely explanation for the "feeling" that it is a dream is that a trained observer has recognized a pattern of incoherent details subconsciously or not quite consciously, and does not know which incoherences triggered the lucidity and actually does not quite know whether or not it was incoherences, but I think given that this is more likely to occur after successfully practicing ADA, noticing incoherences is a valid theory for what causes this dream feeling, but statistics of what people report caused lucidity would not represent this because in those cases the dreamer does not know consciously that this is what caused the feeling of dream. Also such noticing incoherences would require one to become a very experienced observer in waking life, and thus a lot of effort, something most would be lucid dreamers would not be up to, and I think it is more likely to occur with more advance lucid dreamers who practice ADA and or ther self awareness techniques during the day. I still think that doing ADA right one needs to put self awareness into it. However, given how this dream feeling would only be something that some lucid dreamers get, and even those who get it will likely not be able to report whether of not the dream feeling was caused by observed inconsistencies, so the proportion of those who responded to the survey who experienced this and identified it as due to inconsistencies observed would be small, but that would not mean that inconsistencies observed could not be the underlying reason for this dream feeling, and that becoming an experienced observer is not a good way of reaching lucidity.

If I do not make enough sense, please forgive me, I just experienced major brain fry activity at work, so I may be less coherent right now, but I hope I am coherent enough.

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## CosmicIron

> I would argue with that statistic. I would say that all you can say is that less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence and knowing consciously in hindsight that that is what caused them to become lucid. My argument has been that I think that a very likely explanation for the "feeling" that it is a dream is that a trained observer has recognized a pattern of incoherent details subconsciously or not quite consciously, and does not know which incoherences triggered the lucidity and actually does not quite know whether or not it was incoherences, but I think given that this is more likely to occur after successfully practicing ADA, noticing incoherences is a valid theory for what causes this dream feeling, but statistics of what people report caused lucidity would not represent this because in those cases the dreamer does not know consciously that this is what caused the feeling of dream. Also such noticing incoherences would require one to become a very experienced observer in waking life, and thus a lot of effort, something most would be lucid dreamers would not be up to, and I think it is more likely to occur with more advance lucid dreamers who practice ADA and or ther self awareness techniques during the day. I still think that doing ADA right one needs to put self awareness into it. However, given how this dream feeling would only be something that some lucid dreamers get, and even those who get it will likely not be able to report whether of not the dream feeling was caused by observed inconsistencies, so the proportion of those who responded to the survey who experienced this and identified it as due to inconsistencies observed would be small, but that would not mean that inconsistencies observed could not be the underlying reason for this dream feeling, and that becoming an experienced observer is not a good way of reaching lucidity.
> 
> If I do not make enough sense, please forgive me, I just experienced major brain fry activity at work, so I may be less coherent right now, but I hope I am coherent enough.



The survey actually included people of all levels of proficiencies... But then again anything is possible, and I'm not drawing conclusions.

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## Nift

I agree with you, Sageous. In fact when I first read KingYoshi's ADA tutorial, it didn't make sense to me as a lucid dreaming tool until MindGames chimed in with his take on it:





> I think that if you were to be constantly aware of your environment in the context of whether or not aspects are dreamlike, it would be more effective in producing nightly lucid dreams. This would train your mind to focus primarily on dream-related aspects in your environment, thus increasing the effectiveness of your awareness. This would allow you to effectively be constantly performing a reality check, in the sense that your mind is constantly questioning if your environment is a dream, rather than just primarily paying attention to your environment.

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## Sageous

> Let me try to elaborate a little bit on the point I was trying to make. First on the subject of minor awareness sparking lucidity. Assuming this is true, and assuming such minor awareness can be gained upon the very earliest dreams in our sleep cycles, then we should be seeing much more frequent DILDs during the early part of sleep. Unfortunately this is not the case, even for experienced dreamers. 
> 
> Let's modify our second assumption -- maybe we do not gain such *minor* awareness until we reach the later stages of our sleeps. For this to be true, we have to also assume that we have little to nil awareness during the early part of our sleeps. However that is clearly not the case! That brings us to another hypothesis -- maybe there is some fundamental difference between the awareness that powers our early dreams and the awareness that's gained during the later stage? If this is the case, then for ADA and similar techs to work they have to exercise the later kind of awareness, not the former.



I agree, if we're talking about the natural awareness as espoused in ADA  (which, once more to be clear, I feel will not help much in firing that initial spark of lucidity anyway) .  I hadn't given much thought to limited DILD's early on, but don't doubt it's a fact.  But couldn't that be the case for other reasons as well? Perhaps there's some primitive switch that holds us in sleep, awareness-be-damned, for the first couple of hours, since back in the tree-hanging days we may have only had those hours for the restorative part of dreams. Also, since REM periods are shorter and more separated earlier in the night, it makes sense statistically that there would be fewer DILD's then.  But yes, some basic natural awareness must be present in all dreams, or the dreams literally would not exist, so that is an interesting point.





> The point I'm trying to make through this is that it takes a great deal for this type of detachment to occur, and even greater amount of effort is required to maintain it. As such, regardless of what it is -- awareness or not, there is nothing "minor" about it.



True.  Perhaps "minor" was the wrong word.  You need a strong push of self-awareness to become lucid _at all_, and that push may need to increase in order to maintain awareness and control or explore the dream. Not so minor, really (and again, even then you need that something "more" I mentioned above).  I guess what I was trying to say was that there is an initial moment during the _NLD_ where you come to realize that "you" are in a dream.  That initial moment might be little more than a niggling sense, or, as I think you mention, and emotional response to stimuli in the dream, like a nightmare.  _After_ that feeling occurs comes a more solid sense of self-awareness and the LD ensues, hopefully with self-awareness increasing steadily. So, relative to the subsequent LD, this initial moment would indeed be minor; but no, relative to the normal non-existence of self-awareness in a NLD, this initial moment would be huge.  I hope that clarified my thought, because we do agree on this.  Now to the non-agreement part:





> This kind of detachment do occur sometimes spontaneously though, and I suspect that's all part of the dream plot. A common scenario is that during intense nightmares people tend to either wake up, become lucid, take on a third-person perspective, or the dream itself turn into narrative form. My suspicion is that lucidity, in its more primitive form, is nothing but a built-in mechanism of our dreams, sort of like a safe switch. Sometimes it's for protection, and sometimes it's needed by the unconscious as part of the dream plot in order to tell its "stories". And this is what I meant by saying lucidity may have more to do with psychology than things such as "awareness".



Interesting idea, but it's one that runs completely anathema to my own view of the nature of lucidity. 

My opinion is that there is no such thing as primitive lucidity.  Lucidity, for me, is a side-effect of sentience, and it could not exist until we were able to take a moment and say "I am here." Indeed, it must have been disconcerting indeed for the first sentient cavemen to notice their presence in dreams (the source of much mythology and nascent religious tenet, I would imagine). I also believe, though in no way can prove or even qualify, that nature (as in evolution) never intended for us to be sentient; self-awareness was an accident of the extreme evolutionary development of our brains.  

So it doesn't make sense to me that we would have had a pre-sentient mechanism that triggered lucidity, since lucidity could not exist yet.  Also, it wouldn't be much of a defense mechanism, because if something bad were happening, wouldn't it be better for that primitive sleeper to just wake up, via the reticular system?  I suppose that _since then_ we may have developed a mechanism that smooths the flow of communication between the conscious and unconscious mind during dreams by unconscious triggering of self-awareness to make sure some dream message is understood... but I also believe that in the extremely extensive psychological work done in the last century that a process that obvious would have been discovered quite quickly and become a standard for therapy -- yet it has not.  

No, for me lucidity cannot be sourced in the natural functions of the brain and dreaming; indeed, LD'ing is a fundamentally unnatural act (which is why it can be so hard to do).  I could be wrong, and I have no expectation for you to agree with me, but I figured I'd share, even if we may need to maintain friendly disagreement on this.





> Granted there are exceptions, as demonstrated by our survey -- approximately less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence within the dreams. I feel that ADA and similar techs probably can help in this case, but do not serve as determining factors.



Again, agreed.  But I have to wonder how many of the ADA and similar tech users are noticing that incoherence because of the tech, or because all that tech work has prepared their minds -- fired up their self-awareness --  for the event. Perhaps the difference is irrelevant, as long as folks are getting to lucidity anyway?

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## Meskhetyw

_Sageous:_

_    "Again, agreed. But I have to wonder how many of the ADA and similar tech users are noticing that incoherence because of the tech, or because all that tech work has prepared their minds -- fired up their self-awareness -- for the event."_

Well said. This is an important point for me (just too curious for my own good). Several of my lucid experiences came from observing a room, and then upon returning later, found a relatively small and usually unnoticed object had changed color. Success? Usually. I remember arguing with a DC for about 5 minutes about such an occurrence and he was able to convince me that I was mistaken. However, with the addition of self awareness practice, the DC no longer has any effect on me because I realize that he is dead, or that I am in a place I shouldn't be to begin with, or my feelings are not normal, etc.

On the other hand, those incidents are the minority; usually lucidity comes not from object observation for me, but from "rationalizing" that something is simply impossible or very unlikely as it relates to who I am.

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## Sivason

My take on this. Any form of mental training is helpful. Mental training should evolve as the practioner grows, so many varying mental tools are eventually used. The brain creates new pathways from the training, and this advancment in neural processing is there while you sleep, as it is a physical improvement. ADA is a fine method of self-improvement and will lead to new neural development, but ideally will not be the only form of discipline practiced. (also, I have always considered ADA to refer to Yoshi's tutorial)

Awareness is so key to LDing that it is almost not up for debate. The idea of a spontaneous DILD involves two factors (IMHO), first the moment when you noticed an anomily may have been leading up to the lucid moment, and not be remembered because it occured pre-lucidity. Second, the development of the new neural connections that allow 'seemingly spontanious' DILD, are built during waking life by new levels of attention/ awareness in one thing or another.

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## melanieb

> Awareness is so key to LDing that it is almost not up for debate. The idea of a spontaneous DILD involves two factors (IMHO), first the moment when you noticed an anomily may have been leading up to the lucid moment, and not be remembered because it occured pre-lucidity. Second, the development of the new neural connections that allow 'seemingly spontanious' DILD, are built during waking life by new levels of attention/ awareness in one thing or another.



I believe one can become lucid without sudden awareness of something "out-of-place" and that sometimes "it just happens."

That being said...this thread could easily be summed up with three simple phrases:

- Awareness of your surroundings and environment is *a good thing to practice* while awake.
- ADA *can* help you achieve lucidity.
- Awareness *can be achieved* without ADA.

How you get to a lucid dream isn't important. What matters, in every instance, is that you get there.   :smiley:

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## KingYoshi

I agree with many of the points here and understand some of the argument against....some. Anyway, there seems to be a general misunderstanding with how ADA works amongst some. While ADA can help with recognizing incoherence, irregularities, things out of place, etc, that isn't what ADA should be practiced for. ADA makes spontaneous lucidity a regularity to the point that it isn't spontaneous anymore. ADA teaches your mind to become lucid because you are in a dream. Not because you can tell its a dream, but because you KNOW its a dream. You just know it and realize it without anything at all happening within said dream from one point to another. That is the "feeling" I'm talking about for lack of a better word. Its not a physical feeling, its a mental feeling. A feeling of presence and nothing more. The presence of the dream I suppose. It almost needs to be experienced to be understood. With ADA, your mind is being trained to naturally distinguish between reality and the dream state. If you get deep enough into ADA with regard to lucid dreaming and are able to always distinguish between reality and the dream state, you will be forever lucid. 

You guys say it can't be the only tool for lucidity and I can agree with that. It CAN be your only induction technique if you wish. I practice ADA, dream journal, and that is it as far as boosters and techniques go. I get 15-25 "spontaneous" DILDs per month (average at 20 per).  At some point, its not "spontaneous" anymore....right? There is no way I could ever agree with anything that states that ADA, if practiced correctly, does not significantly boost lucidity....significantly.

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## melanieb

> I agree with many of the points here and understand some of the argument against....some. Anyway, there seems to be a general misunderstanding with how ADA works amongst some. While ADA can help with recognizing incoherence, irregularities, things out of place, etc, that isn't what ADA should be practiced for. ADA makes spontaneous lucidity a regularity to the point that it isn't spontaneous anymore. ADA teaches your mind to become lucid because you are in a dream. Not because you can tell its a dream, but because you KNOW its a dream. You just know it and realize it without anything at all happening within said dream from one point to another. That is the "feeling" I'm talking about for lack of a better word. Its not a physical feeling, its a mental feeling. A feeling of presence and nothing more. The presence of the dream I suppose. It almost needs to be experienced to be understood. With ADA, your mind is being trained to naturally distinguish between reality and the dream state. If you get deep enough into ADA with regard to lucid dreaming and are able to always distinguish between reality and the dream state, you will be forever lucid. 
> 
> You guys say it can't be the only tool for lucidity and I can agree with that. It CAN be your only induction technique if you wish. I practice ADA, dream journal, and that is it as far as boosters and techniques go. I get 15-25 "spontaneous" DILDs per month (average at 20 per).  At some point, its not "spontaneous" anymore....right? There is no way I could ever agree with anything that states that ADA, if practiced correctly, does not significantly boost lucidity....significantly.



I think we all agree with what you have said.

No worries. It's all good.   :smiley:

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## VagalTone

ADA is important but it´s not enough. If you also practice critical questioning/ RC then it is a wonderful combo.

So ADA+critical questioning is a synergistic interaction. ADA will help you remember to test your state while awake, help with vividness and recall while asleep.

Also, ADA may build intentionality ( but that´s not a ADA specific mechanism ). So, to practice ADA alone is, IMO, mainly an intention technique, which will only be helpful if you think so.

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## CosmicIron

> So, to practice ADA alone is, IMO, mainly an intention technique, which will only be helpful if you think so.



Well said.

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## tofur

yeah I was gunna mention that, that maybe most of this is really just a matter of intention.  Our subconscious knows why we are doing whatever practice were doing (to have LD's), and by being consistent with the practice were telling the sub that LDing is important to us, so it obliges.

edit:  actually I duhno, first lucid I ever had came a couple weeks into vipassana meditation practice, and I was not intending to lucid dream at all, didn't even know it was possible.

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## martydee

Just wondering if anyone on this thread has read Arnold Mindell's 'Dreaming while awake: techniques for 24-hour lucid dreaming.' 

I recently ordered it and am waiting with bated breath. Hopefully with good reason.

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## KingYoshi

ADA is NOT an intention technique. You don't have to believe it will work to build up the ability to distinguish between the two states (dream and reality). They are different. They aren't the same. Your brain is capable of realizing this. Its almost like building up an instinct to knowing you are in a dream. The skill begins to feel instinctive. 

Of course, using intentions is a basic practice to enhance any technique. So, its recommended to use your intentions to lucid dream at all times.






> ADA is important but it´s not enough. If you also practice critical questioning/ RC then it is a wonderful combo.
> 
> So ADA+critical questioning is a synergistic interaction. ADA will help you remember to test your state while awake, help with vividness and recall while asleep.
> 
> Also, ADA may build intentionality ( but that´s not a ADA specific mechanism ). So, to practice ADA alone is, IMO, mainly an intention technique, which will only be helpful if you think so.



I agree and that is why critical questioning of reality is written into the ADA guide. Its a part of it. Excerpt: 

"Prior to performing your RC, take a moment to become aware of your surroundings. Even if you know that you are awake, pretend that everything around you is actually a dream. Finally, perform your RC and see if you are actually dreaming. A quality RC is a RC in which you question your reality."

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## Sivason

I understand what some of you mean by a feeling or knowing that makes you lucid, with out anything appearing out of place or doing an RC. I may argue though that the very clear difference between being awake and in a dream, is an anomily that is noticed causing lucidity. In that sense it is not a spontaneous LD. True you did not see your cat become a rabbit, and you did not pass you hands through each other, but something was different and you became aware of it,,, became lucid because of it. 

I do completely understand that awareness training does not relie on spotting obvious oddities. It often is just that your awareness is now so keen, that it becomes a bit obvious that a dream is a dream.

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## Bobblehat

Does ADA work by giving dreams better continuity? NL dreams are often all over the place, just like our thoughts in waking life much of the time.

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## JoannaB

> Does ADA work by giving dreams better continuity? NL dreams are often all over the place, just like our thoughts in waking life much of the time.



No, ADA helps you realize that continuity of events in waking life is an illusion, a construct of our not paying enough attention and then fooling ourselves into believing in continuity of events based on an edited version of events created by our Swiss cheese memory and cognitive biases and strong desire for continuity superimposed on a reality in which there is much less continuity than we like to claim there is.

Edit: in other words, none of our states of being, neither waking nor dreaming, neither thought nor perceived, none of them is really continuous, so let's not expect continuity. We want waking reality to be continuous, so if we do not live in the moment, we create edited versions of memories that are as continuous as we want them to be. Come to think of it, that is much like dream recall after the fact.

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## Laurelindo

I think the so-called Critical Questions are a good way to approach ADA.
These kinds of questions are "where am I now?", "why am I here?", "what exactly am I doing right now? Why? What is this place?" etc.
Basically, my definition of ADA is that you try to be as aware as possible of _yourself_.
I believe this is the only thing you really need to practice in order to become lucid - if you become aware of your own dream body and your own existence then you will naturally start paying attention to the dreamworld as well and examine things, which will lead to lucidity.

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## Meskhetyw

That's right. I can't tell you how many of my "non-lucid dreams" I realize to actually be low level lucid dreams when I am writing in my journal. I am very often aware that I am dreaming for whatever reason, but don't really become fully aware until I start examining myself and my place in the dream.

I think all awareness can help, but self awareness seems to be the most effective form for me.

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## Sageous

^^ Well, I guess I can't help but agree with those last two posts!

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## VagalTone

In terms of lucidity, I think the most important thing is the critical and reflective aspect of awareness and not so much whether you direct it to yourself or your environment. But i may be wrong, as in fact the most stable and the only ever-present* element of waking and dream world may be our sense of self and body image (* if you don´t become a drop of rain or something )

In terms of our daily life, self awareness ( not to be confounded with self consciousness or extreme self worry ) is a major psychological feature, so it´s worth cultivating. 

Conclusion: self awareness may be key to both wake and dream state.

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## Laurelindo

It also feels quite beautiful to practice ADA and maintain your self-awareness, it makes real life feel a lot more surrealistic and magical.  :smiley: 
Probably because you have the same attitude to your surroundings as you have during lucid dreams.

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## Bobblehat

> It also feels quite beautiful to practice ADA and maintain your self-awareness, it makes real life feel a lot more surrealistic and magical. 
> Probably because you have the same attitude to your surroundings as you have during lucid dreams.



Yes, and that's exactly the reason why I don't do awareness techs all day; I like my times of heightened awareness during the day to be special times.

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## Daredevilpwn

Been awhile since I've been on this forum (internet troubles) but heres my take. Awareness by its self is useless, it simply helps you get more vivid dreams, you must harness this awareness so that you can realize you are dreaming. This is where critical questioning comes into play. Awareness + critical questioning = lucidity. Critical questioning without the awareness to back it up results with you saying "am i dreaming" and not even becoming lucid because you do it like any other "mindless" habit.

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## Laurelindo

> Been awhile since I've been on this forum (internet troubles) but heres my take. Awareness by its self is useless, it simply helps you get more vivid dreams, you must harness this awareness so that you can realize you are dreaming. This is where critical questioning comes into play. Awareness + critical questioning = lucidity. Critical questioning without the awareness to back it up results with you saying "am i dreaming" and not even becoming lucid because you do it like any other "mindless" habit.



I had an experience like that last night, when I had screwed up royally at some kind of job (forgot equipment after driving several miles, lost the car keys on my way back etc) and I actually stood still for a very long time (several minutes) and wished for myself that everything could just be a dream and that I could wake up from all that mess.
And I even lost hope and accepted that it was reality "because it felt so real", and I had to deal with my situation the best I could.

And suddenly I was lying in bed.

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## VagalTone

> Awareness + critical questioning = lucidity.



Yup, i agree, specially for DILD. The challenge is to integrate the two and find a comfortable and meaningful approach, otherwise you will get tired.

Whoever choses this approach deserves my utmost respect and admiration

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## Daredevilpwn

> I had an experience like that last night, when I had screwed up royally at some kind of job (forgot equipment after driving several miles, lost the car keys on my way back etc) and I actually stood still for a very long time (several minutes) and wished for myself that everything could just be a dream and that I could wake up from all that mess.
> And I even lost hope and accepted that it was reality "because it felt so real", and I had to deal with my situation the best I could.
> 
> And suddenly I was lying in bed.



I had similar experiences. And I am starting to experience first hand what it feels like. Just before I get lucid but have a high awareness to remember how I am feeling. I am absolutely convinced that whatever I am experiencing is real until I decide to confirm I am dreaming with a reality check. It still boggles me how I totally believe this dream is waking life until I do a reality check. I think Sageous is correct when he said that ADA makes the dreamer believes his dreams are real, because it truly does because we experience more detail. And in this instance, yes ADA is bad, but combine ADA with critical questioning and then you got something going on for you when it comes to attaining lucidity.

When I was just doing ADA (no questioning) with some sensory awareness meditation for dream yoga, I noticed my dreams were more vivid but not exactly lucid. When I then decided to combine questioning with it, I noticed I also just "know" I am dreaming sometimes.

So to answer the OP. My answer is Yes and no. No because ADA by its self is only half of the equation and doesn't result in lucids. And yes because when combined with critical questioning it becomes a powerful tool.

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## Sensei

In my opinion, ADA practices awareness of around you, but in order to LD you need what I call:
General Dream Awareness 
This is basic recall, simple control of your dream, the ability to think in your dreams. 

State awareness
A basic way of differentiate between waking and sleeping. 

So ADA doesn't address the first one, and the second one only works if the All Day Awareness is bein aware of the state, like hukif's gravity RC that at all times asks himself the question "dream?" 

It is what Waggoner calls a "critical question" that naturals develop. The question is always in their mind and always answered at all times, so they know if it is a dream or not, normally to protect against nightmares.

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## gbbr

What an interesting (and old) topic. I hope you still find answers to it relevant. Here's my take.

I don't know if ADA works, but my feeling is that it does. I have started actively working on LD for 3 months and my frequency of lucid dreams has been growing significantly. I can't say that it's because of ADA, but I can say for sure that it makes 100% sense to me that increasing your presence and attention to sense objects will definitely pour into the dream state, resulting in an increased awareness in the dream and as a result better recall. My hunch and feeling so far is that better awareness in the dream along with better recall (they are kind of the same thing in my opinion!) are the road to have more frequent lucid dreams.

I tend to doubt the part about self-awareness. I have been practicing Vipassana (Goenka) for over 2 years and meditation in various other forms for much longer than that and it has served me nothing in the dream state. I am almost constantly aware of my feelings and sensations in the body. It doesn't help much with identifying the dream state. On the contrary, it encourages one to put less importance on the sense objects and more on the inner world.

One interesting thing to ask is: what is self awareness? Why do you consider it only sensations and feelings? Senses are also part of the self? Are the result of senses not also in the mind? Is the mind not considered a sense itself? These are interesting things to consider.

I am still learning, and none of the above are hard statements or beliefs, just my thoughts at the current time. I have only read the OP and none of the replies when I wrote this.

I think the difference you are highlighting between awareness and self-awareness is nothing more than being aware of the fact that the world we perceive is influenced by our own perception, and is not, in terms of ultimate reality, as perceived. As long as you are observing everything around you as a dream (in terms of Tibetan Yoga) or as your own mind (in terms of whatever) I think it's the right way to do it. But you're making a good point underlining this.

I would not draw a line between the two. Instead, I would focus more on explaining "the right way" to ADA. Self-awareness can also have the opposite to the negative effect you describe, and that is: ignoring your surroundings at the expense of being aware only of your inner world (feelings, sensations, thoughts). That will also not lead to lucidity.

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## Sageous

^^ Old topic, maybe, but I'm still around, so:

That's an interesting take, Gbbr, and actually I agree with most of it.  If you have time to read on into the thread, and try to ignore the, um, lesser moments in my conversation with King Yoshi, I think you might -- if I remember properly -- find the discussion more enlightening than my limited OP.

But I must take issue with one thing you said:





> One interesting thing to ask is: what is self awareness? Why do you consider it only sensations and feelings? Senses are also part of the self? Are the result of senses not also in the mind? Is the mind not considered a sense itself? These are interesting things to consider.



I'm not sure how you came to this interpretation of my OP here.  Why? Because I never, even once, said that self-awareness, from my perspective, is about considering _only_ sensations and feelings. Since my definition of self-awareness is pretty short, here again are the paragraphs about it in this thread's OP, with the definition itself in bold:





> _Self-awareness is nothing more -- or less -- than being aware that you are here, that you have an effect on everything around you, and everything around you has an effect on you. Self-awareness is the sense that “I am here, and I am interacting with reality” which is also the sense you want to have during a dream. In other words, it is the most “unnatural” state of consciousness, in that we only invented sentience a short time ago, evolutionarily-speaking.
> 
> Mastering self-awareness allows a dreamer to know that the universe she is in is a dream, and that universe is of her own making, a part of her consciousness... fairly important things to know for successful LD'ing, I think!_



That's it, really.  As you can see there's nothing there about looking inward and focusing on sensations or feelings, or on _anything_ in particular. It is only about acknowledgement of your own presence, and your interaction with reality (two things that ADA as presented back then ignored, BTW). 





> I think the difference you are highlighting between awareness and self-awareness is nothing more than being aware of the fact that the world we perceive is influenced by our own perception, and is not, in terms of ultimate reality, as perceived. As long as you are observing everything around you as a dream (in terms of Tibetan Yoga) or as your own mind (in terms of whatever) I think it's the right way to do it. But you're making a good point underlining this.



 Well no, not really. I wasn't referring to  "the fact that the world we perceive is influenced by our own perception, and is not, in terms of ultimate reality, as perceived." That wasn't what I meant at all; that kind of depth is not necessary here, I think.  

Also, I have never been a proponent of observing everything around you as a dream during waking-life, because that is something that I cannot see being done with any sincerity; reality is reality, unavoidably (sorry Tibetans!). Quite the contrary:  If your self-awareness is strong, and you bring it into a dream, then you will immediately know you are dreaming because the nature of your interaction with reality has changed dramatically.  In other words, a self-aware person will know that his presence spans the entire dream, that _he is the dream_, and the first way he'll notice this is because the nature of the reality with which he is interacting is not that of his waking-life.





> I would not draw a line between the two. Instead, I would focus more on explaining "the right way" to ADA. Self-awareness can also have the opposite to the negative effect you describe, and that is: ignoring your surroundings at the expense of being aware only of your inner world (feelings, sensations, thoughts). That will also not lead to lucidity.



Again, and perhaps belaboring the point by now, I never said, even once, to ignore your surroundings and only being aware of your inner world. Yes indeed, just doing that would run counter to lucidity by any measure -- but it is not what I recommended, or included in my descriptions.  

I do hope you might read on in the thread; I think you might find that we are in stronger agreement than you currently feel, and I also think you will come to understand my problems with ADA (plus you'll see that we eventually did discuss, extensively, I think, the "right way" to practice ADA).

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## lenscaper

> reality is reality, unavoidably (sorry Tibetans!).



I got a chuckle out of that. I, too, have struggled with the basic concept of seeing waking life as a dream......even as I feel as though I have benefited from pondering the concept a lot. The more I ponder it, the more it makes sense on some levels.

I address this in my mind by thinking about how each of us is constantly creating our _perception_ of that reality through our own personal cognitive reality. I think we all see things from a very personal perspective. I mean, if you and I, Sageous, were standing here in my office I think our perception of the surroundings would be different in subtle (or even not so subtle) ways. Its a bit like how two people standing and looking at a rainbow are each seeing a different rainbow due to the physics of the whole thing.

And speaking of physics, I also sometimes try to correlate this concept with the fact that in quantum physics it has been proven that measurement determines reality. That is, a particle does not exist in a certain state until it is observed in that state. Yeah....I guess that may be kind of a stretch, but its another interesting way to make sense of this question. Either way, I don't take the whole "everything is a dream" thing too literally. It really does help me, though, in my quest to establish that unbroken continuity of consciousness between awake and a'dream.





> what is self awareness?



What is helping me of late is to equate self awareness to "body awareness". I feel as though when I am completely concentrating on my body; folding all of my senses inward if you will, I am tuning everything else completely out....so I am completely in that moment only. I do this during the day a lot and then at night as I prepare for sleep. Once again, if I can take the unbroken continuity of that awareness into the dream it helps me separate myself from the reality of the dream.

My dreams tend to be incredibly real. Sometimes when I am verging on true lucidity I stop and and gaze around in amazement at the reality of the scene and lucidity is left hanging out there in the balance. At times like these, my awareness of self connects me back to my body and lucidity once again blooms.

I have this mantra that I do a lot during the day: 

The body connects to the moment
The moment connects to pure presence
Which is fueled by non-dual awareness
That's born from pure perception.

That is, of course, unabashedly ripped off from the Tibetan Dream Yoga stuff. My ADA protocol pretty much boils down to that these days and it is helping me a lot.

I have spent some time on this excellent thread....think I'll spend a bit more.

 :smiley:

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## Sageous

> I address this in my mind by thinking about how each of us is constantly creating our _perception_ of that reality through our own personal cognitive reality. I think we all see things from a very personal perspective. I mean, if you and I, Sageous, were standing here in my office I think our perception of the surroundings would be different in subtle (or even not so subtle) ways. Its a bit like how two people standing and looking at a rainbow are each seeing a different rainbow due to the physics of the whole thing.
> 
> And speaking of physics, I also sometimes try to correlate this concept with the fact that in quantum physics it has been proven that measurement determines reality. That is, a particle does not exist in a certain state until it is observed in that state. Yeah....I guess that may be kind of a stretch, but its another interesting way to make sense of this question. Either way, I don't take the whole "everything is a dream" thing too literally. It really does help me, though, in my quest to establish that unbroken continuity of consciousness between awake and a'dream.



And yet, in both cases, reality is still reality, regardless of how differently two people may (and do) perceive it. And don't get me started on my opinion of translating logistical quirks in quantum physics experiments into observations done in full-scale waking-life reality.  Yes, a subatomic particle's/wave's state is defined when it is observed, but to me that does not -- and should not -- translate to larger objects because, well, it doesn't.  

Also:





> What is helping me of late is to equate self awareness to "body awareness". I feel as though when I am completely concentrating on my body; folding all of my senses inward if you will, I am tuning everything else completely out....so I am completely in that moment only. I do this during the day a lot and then at night as I prepare for sleep. Once again, if I can take the unbroken continuity of that awareness into the dream it helps me separate myself from the reality of the dream.



You might consider being wary of doing this, with regard to LD'ing, especially as your skills improve.  Creating a system of duality in a dream (which is basically what it seems you are doing) may prevent you from fully realizing that the entire dream is you, with no separations, and not realizing that might prevent you from fully exploring the nature and potentials of your dreams.  I recommend that you pay attention to your mantra, and allow that non-dual awareness to develop and blossom in your dreams.

Also, and very much my own opinion, I've found that the "inward gazing" of many meditational practices tends to run anathema to successful LD'ing.  It might work great in waking-life, but in a dream, separating your self, especially in the form of your DC-self, from the greater whole of your dream, seems to not be a great idea.  After all, the dream is you, why make all that wonder something other than you?  This, BTW, is the part that was nearly on-topic, because that separation is one of the problems I have with ADA.





> My dreams tend to be incredibly real. Sometimes when I am verging on true lucidity I stop and and gaze around in amazement at the reality of the scene and lucidity is left hanging out there in the balance. At times like these, my awareness of self connects me back to my body and lucidity once again blooms.



  Except that there is no body in dreams, only a DC body that you may or may not be occupying at the time.  Connecting with that, and coming to use it as a primary tool, could lead you to a place where lucidity depends on a separation of your self from the dream, which might hold back your growth and lead, possibly, to false lucids _about_ regrouping in your DC body.  This same warning holds if it is your physical body you are connecting to, BTW (just remembering your sleeping body is enough, I think; no need to retreat to it).

Also, as an aside:  There is a reason dreams tend to seem incredibly real which has nothing to do with lucidity: the imagery you are seeing in a dream is created without having to move first through the filters of your physical perception, so they have an opportunity to be quite pure.  The imagery is probably just as clear in NLD's, but the reason they seem so much more clear during LD's is because in NLD's, you really don't care because that's the way it's supposed to be, but when lucid you're consciously witnessing the precision.  Instead of separating, why not be amazed that such imagery exists in your imagination, and that this beauty is a part of you?   



 :sageous:

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## Meskhetyw

Well, this is a bit nostalgic...

For me, self-awareness is all about context and relevance. I seem to remember some years ago Sageous saying something about how he always, or at least very often, has a certain awareness that he is dreaming even though he may not be lucid at the time. This struck me then because I have the same experience, and it never fades, whether I am actively practicing during the day or not. It has been this way long enough for me to observe over time the points at which this awareness becomes apparent in the dream, and it always involves relevance and context; that is, it is relevant to myself and how I interact with the world.





> If your self-awareness is strong, and you bring it into a dream, then you will immediately know you are dreaming because the nature of your interaction with reality has changed dramatically.



This is exactly what I mean.

Understand as well, I used to practice all sorts of "types" of awareness during the day. In the end I wouldn't say most of it was useless or ineffective, just that most of it was probably superfluous, or less effective as far as becoming lucid is concerned. When I came to this forum and read some of Sageous's posts on awareness, it confirmed what I was only beginning to suspect; that all of the practices I was doing _in context_ were probably the most useful. Since then I have been able to observe this enough to be fairly certain.

None of this is to say that other, whether environmental or inward, practices of awareness did not have uses for other aspects such as control. Having better control over your mind/attention is always helpful.

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## lenscaper

> And don't get me started on my opinion of translating logistical quirks in quantum physics experiments into observations done in full-scale waking-life reality.  Yes, a subatomic particle's/wave's state is defined when it is observed, but to me that does not -- and should not -- translate to larger objects because, well, it doesn't.



You'll have to forgive these random musings of mine.





> Creating a system of duality in a dream (which is basically what it seems you are doing) may prevent you from fully realizing that the entire dream is you, with no separations, and not realizing that might prevent you from fully exploring the nature and potentials of your dreams.



I appreciate that insight. I am fully inhabiting my dreams these days. Whatever I have been doing has been working in my dreams........and is translating into my waking life as well. I have never felt so...non-dual. It is ...quite refreshing.

 :smiley:

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## gbbr

> I'm not sure how you came to this interpretation of my OP here.



I wrote the response in a hasty way. I wasn't meaning to contradict what you said. I did understand what you mean. I think my main idea here is that any of these techniques (self-awareness, environment awareness, mindfulness) come down to the very interpretation of the reader and they don't have to be mutually exclusive, and that each one of them can be practiced the wrong way if you end up excluding any part of your experience.





> What is helping me of late is to equate self awareness to "body awareness". I feel as though when I am completely concentrating on my body; folding all of my senses inward if you will, I am tuning everything else completely out....so I am completely in that moment only. I do this during the day a lot and then at night as I prepare for sleep. Once again, if I can take the unbroken continuity of that awareness into the dream it helps me separate myself from the reality of the dream.



Self-awareness can be interpreted as being aware _only_ of the framework of your body, excluding the environment. I have practiced this for a very long time (through Vipassana) and I'm not convinced it brought me any benefit other than potentially making me more aware of my reactions, which isn't necessarily bad. In theory it sounds good, but for me I found that less so in practice. My reasoning was similar to what you describe: since my feelings and sensations represent my nearest reaction to my environment, they are best connected to the present moment and are the absolute sum and result of it, thus, there is no need to pay attention to anything else. In a sense, it's believable and nice, but requires focusing on just one thing, while ignoring the rest, offering a very biased view.

Awareness (what is generally on this forum called ADA) can be interpreted as paying attention to _only_ the environment, which is the opposite of the above and makes you neglect your own presence and exclude the most important part of it, YOU.

I think the truth, and what I plan to try out now, is a type of awareness which includes both and excludes none. I think this is what Sageous is pointing at. Technically, I made it a goal to experiment for two months with Sageous's version of being aware, and that is: simply knowing you are here, in the environment. I've done it before, for a very brief time and noticed incredible shifts in behaviour and perspective. As for how much it helps with lucid dreaming, we'll see. Thank you for your reply. This is a topic that interests me greatly and for a long time I thought that being aware means _focusing_ on something (breath, sensations, body, etc), which made it incredibly difficult to maintain awareness when something else required focus (work, computer, conversation, etc). The way you put it: simply knowing, and not focusing on something, is very interesting and is something I want to play around with.

I am very interested in exploring this topic further and discovering together where misunderstandings lie in the guides, improving them based on our discoveries so that more people can better understand them and benefit from them. I will reply here by the end of the two months, or occasionally during them to update you on how maintaining this knowing of myself within my environment is affecting me and potentially my lucid dreaming. If you prefer I do it in another thread, let me know.

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## Sageous

> I wrote the response in a hasty way. I wasn't meaning to contradict what you said. I did understand what you mean. I think my main idea here is that any of these techniques (self-awareness, environment awareness, mindfulness) come down to the very interpretation of the reader and they don't have to be mutually exclusive, and that each one of them can be practiced the wrong way if you end up excluding any part of your experience.



Okay, I think I figured this out:  The self-awareness that I am discussing is not a technique about being aware of, say your body. No, it is a state of mind.  It may be achieved by practicing techniques but it is not one itself.  Self-awareness is not a thing you do, it is a thing you are.  This might just sound like semantics to you, or may be getting lost in translation, but I figured I should clarify so that your upcoming experiment reflects this, and is not using self-awareness as a technique.

That said:




> I think the truth, and what I plan to try out now, is a type of awareness which includes both and excludes none. I think this is what Sageous is pointing at. Technically, I made it a goal to experiment for two months with Sageous's version of being aware, and that is: simply knowing you are here, in the environment. I've done it before, for a very brief time and noticed incredible shifts in behaviour and perspective. As for how much it helps with lucid dreaming, we'll see. Thank you for your reply. This is a topic that interests me greatly and for a long time I thought that being aware means focusing on something (breath, sensations, body, etc), which made it incredibly difficult to maintain awareness when something else required focus (work, computer, conversation, etc). The way you put it: simply knowing, and not focusing on something, is very interesting and is something I want to play around with.
> 
> I am very interested in exploring this topic further and discovering together where misunderstandings lie in the guides, improving them based on our discoveries so that more people can better understand them and benefit from them. I will reply here by the end of the two months, or occasionally during them to update you on how maintaining this knowing of myself within my environment is affecting me and potentially my lucid dreaming. If you prefer I do it in another thread, let me know.



That sounds like a good idea, and also that you understand me (or certainly will). I hope you will report on this thread; it seems like a good addition! If I remember this thread right, King Yoshi and I came to terms finally when he acknowledged that ADA might not be enough on its own, but when practiced with a sense of self it could be a very useful tool.. I look forward to your results!

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## michael79

> Ive noticed that *All Day Awareness (ADA)* has been gaining in popularity lately, and one tutorial and advisory thread after another....



Thank you for creating this thread Sageous  :Nod yes: , not for the OP itself or the countless insults or Ego bursts, but for the things that were born from them. Finally found what can keep me constantly in check and make me lucid on regularly basis. I'm going to add it starting today in my daily basis and I'm sure that it is going to increase my lucidity tenfold.
BTW aroud the date of the creation of ADA tutorial, I tried it too, it increased my lucidity short term, but in long term it gave me increased anxiety, lower pain threshold and too much sensitivity, which negatively impacted my lucidity. But now I incorporate a similar version to ADA or what originally was in the head of King Yoshi when he was creating it.

And you mentioned something about dream become too realistic and because of that lucidity drops, I can contribute to that because I myself fall in this trap, now my dreams are very real which give me a hard time recognize them, but with the tip I just learned, maybe I will be able to keep both things, lucidity and realism, and who knows maybe even longevity will increase.

Thank you!  :Clap:

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