So difficult to get to Day Awareness...

[yanickma]

Hello all, I m sure there is lost of people with this...and I also read a lot about it, but still....It is reaaaaally difficult for me to work on day awareness... I m still not sure how exactly it should be? Should I be thinking of LD a lot during the day? Is looking around me and paying attention is enough? How much time in the day should be recommended to spend in it? I feel somehow day awareness is really the key for LD, the trigger of the spark to get lucid, I only have 3 LD but I feel that achieving a real day awareness should make me succeed in LD more at will than just by pure luck. I m writing this too because i was reading some DJ entries here and lot of them go like "i m out of my house and the street is different I m lucid!" or "My car has another color I m lucid!" I dont know...it sounds so easy for them to spot bizarreness Any input would be appreciated, also some opinions of when you were newbie to this and remember how you got there with awareness....or even if i m wrong to think day awareness is so vital for LD... help please!

[dutchraptor]

Whenever you try awareness just ask yourself "is this a dream", question your surroundings and look for things which seem out of place. Once done just try use every sense you have, touch, hearing, sight and smell. If you do this enough times a day and make it a habit it will carry on to your dreams. I have pieces of paper stuck all over my room saying "lucid dream" and "wake up" just to remind me.

[Drax]

I've been using a technique recently that I've considered writing up. I call it NAT (Narrated Awareness Testing). I have the same problem as you where I have difficulty maintaining ADA all day, annoyed with how to think about things, worry about where and when to perform etc. Also on top of that other LD'ers say to be aware of sounds, people, noises etc to increase the clarity of the dream not to mention prospective memory test every 5 minutes. It's just to overwhelming in my opinion. With NAT all I do is Narrate my daily activities. When I pick something up I'll say "I pick up the orange", like I'm the narrator behind some movie or comic book. I also narrate any noises I hear on the fly and make an effort to narrate people's clothing whenever I see them. I can also keep mental notes by saying "Note to self" like I'm some form of personal tape recorder. The important factor is to do stuff before you engage in a task. For instance before walking over to grab something say "I go to grab the book", "I hear my footsteps truding along the floor". Sometimes I notice that it's incredibly difficult to do this even though what I'm doing is simple. This tells me that there is some natural mental block to blank out mundane activities, by narrating them it can kinda hurt your head. In dreams we often act autonomously, we move from place to place without realizing it, so it remains obvious that rather then becoming aware of the nature of conciousness, RC's etc, just being aware of what we're doing and the present is enough to make one lucid. I also notice I don't forget anything when performing this, normally my short term memory is poor and I often place things down and forget where. But by going "I place the keys on top of the kitchen counter perpindicular to the cupboards". I have much more acute awareness too, if someone was to ask me what someone was wearing/looked like I could probably give a rather detailed account, because I'm actively doing this daily. I also recommend trying to hinder any mental obstruction that inhibit present and current thoughts. Try not to think to much about the future or daydream, also try to inhibit negative emotions. Negative emotions run crazy in dreams so by inhibiting them whenever to the best of your abilities you'll carry this trait through and have better dream control. All you are concerned about is the present experience, just narrate that if you want to remind yourself of something in the future use the Note technique and play it back like a tape recorder.

[Sivason]

The Dream Yoga class in the DVA section has a couple lessons that explain ways of developing the kind of awareness you need. I can not get the link button to work, but DVA is one of the sub-forums. It is very true that developing awareness is a great way to get lucid dreams. At the very least start with what Dutchraptor just taught you, it is very valid and a great start.

[yanickma]

Hello dutchraptor, Drax and sivason, I ll definitively have a look at the DVA section to see this... It s always nice to have different opinions and point of view. Drax, this is something new to me what you just described and I will try this too! Dutch, what you say is what I actually do or try to do...however I m having difficulties to find things out of place let s say....and also my main issue with this is even if I try to believe it for real its hard for me to consider the moment as a possible dream, so I feel I do the RC or the exercise without believing it much....hope I m clear with my explanation... However I already had a couple of LD so I know how it feels in a dream to question reality but for some reason in real life I find it difficult to believe in the awareness testing so sometimes I feel I do it just to do it but with no deeper meaning..know what I mean ?

[Buhl]

I know exactly what you mean since i very recently had the same problem. There really isn't that much to it, you really just need to take the time to think about it. Here's what i do: I am a smoker, so at work, whenever i take a break to go out and destroy my lungs, I look around at different things in the factory (I work as a steel construction designer) and question if it is logical that the things I see are where they are and look how they look, especially the last part since i made them in 3D prior to construction, so i should know how they look. This works very well for me because many of my dreams involves work. But to bring a more common example, after doing this at work for a week, i began doing the same thing at home. Example: I would look at the couch and ask myself if the couch is where the couch would normally be placed, then remember the "history" behind the couch, where did we buy it?, when did we get it?, where were it placed before? etc. etc. It's not like i do this all the time, i just do it like 1-2 times an hour, and i recently became lucid when i "woke up" from a nap and went out into the living room to see my dad's living room instead, and that made me lucid because i remembered asking the "critical" questions last time i saw his couch, so it kinda just turned on the light when i saw it again. Prior to this, i thought i was doing something wrong, but when it worked, i realized it's just paying attention to things and questioning their existence. Atleast that's what works for me, and i am not saying that this is the "right" way to do it, but it works like a charm for me. ^^ I hope you can draw something from my experiences.

[dutchraptor]

As you said in your first post, awareness is key. I find that while I really do try to question reality what really makes it effective is the sudden burst of awareness you get when you suddenly stop what you are doing and think "I should reality check". Rarely do I ever become lucid through logic and reasoning but usually just because I randomly started thinking about dreaming or doing a reality check. I believe that what ADA and SAT tries to achieve is that throughout the day you are becoming aware, not inquisitive or skeptical but just that you realize for a second that you are there and think about what you are doing. It may feel a little akward asking yourself if you are in a dream, but you have to make it a habit so that one day in a dream in which nothing stands out, you can still become lucid by spontaneously becoming aware. Do you understand?

[Isidoor]

I am training my awareness too, spent quiet some time searching for good techniques and trying to fully understand it. I made a thread about my personal technique and what I could find about all this, I'll link it here so I don't have to type it all over again. http://www.dreamviews.com/f11/ada-un...ce-all-138703/

[yanickma]

Hello all, I m quite satisfied with all the responses I am getting since each one is different is some way but relay to the same. Buhl: I like the idea of tracing back the why and how things are around and got there, i m starting to do this today since I feel it makes me concentrate on them more, just not only because they are there but about how the got there. Dutch: I sometimes feel "not believable" to ask myself if i m in a dream during the day because I know I m not, but I will surely try to focus more on stopping my activities and pay attention to my surrounding (still asking me this could be a dream but not making it the whole point of the procedure) because I think I will take better advantage of the exercise doing this. Isidoor: Nice post too! I will try also to go with my senses one by one to avoid over exposure hehehe.... I definitively hope to see better results with this and will be more than happy to get more opinions! I m glad I already had a couple of LDs so I can understand the feeling and the importance of RC and ADA ....but I really want to make it something that I will believe in and not only something like "oh I HAVE to do this" My hope is that I will be able to get lucid more based on a structured approach than only just because of coincidence because there is ton of dreams I have that presented the opportunity to get lucid...obviously I know it s not that easy but well...at least improve a bit.

[yanickma]

ah....this brings to me another question..... Do you think it s better to train general awareness to hopefully get the spark when seeing something weird in a dream, or to focus on a specific topic to dream about and recognize you re dreaming when you see it (Like focusing on wanting to see your hands in dreams until you get to see them and it triggers lucidity)...or both should be intended at the same time?

[Drax]

In regard to your "feel "not believable" to ask myself if i m in a dream during the day because I know I m not" This is one of the reasons I don't perform RC's or use regular ADA techniques. In all cases of lucidity I've known what my RC will evaluate to before performing it. It's a extremely strange phenomenon that all lucid dreamers on here seem to use RC's throughout the day, the hope is that they'll manifest this habit in their dreams, but it's a bad habit if during reality you know how the task will evaluate. If you know you're lucid what's that point? With NAT and just narrating my day I do exactly what you say above, I just train general awareness. If I'm aware of the present in life then I'll be aware of the present dreaming state. How often have I walked from place to place not knowing what I'm doing, not hearing anything, not seeing anything. If I narrate my experience then there's literally no reason awareness will not come. I don't even need to repeat the task in my dreams because this way I can treat the dream experience as a different aspect of awareness. Why would I need to repeat it in the dream experience, I know I'm dreaming at that point, the idea was to cultivate awareness not to be cumbersome. All I do is stop, narrate, I don't focus on peculiarities I just exist in the moment. With no Daydreaming and no Emotional Fluctuations that may impair my ability to perceive the present.

[dutchraptor]

In regard to your "feel "not believable" to ask myself if i m in a dream during the day because I know I m not" This is one of the reasons I don't perform RC's or use regular ADA techniques. In all cases of lucidity I've known what my RC will evaluate to before performing it. It's a extremely strange phenomenon that all lucid dreamers on here seem to use RC's throughout the day, the hope is that they'll manifest this habit in their dreams, but it's a bad habit if during reality you know how the task will evaluate. If you know you're lucid what's that point? Yes it strange that most assume that lucidity comes from the actual reality check, but the system is not exactly faulty if practised right. Essentially what it comes down to is that almost anything which can increase your awareness enough can be used to induce lucidity.

[yanickma]

Yes it strange that most assume that lucidity comes from the actual reality check, but the system is not exactly faulty if practised right. Essentially what it comes down to is that almost anything which can increase your awareness enough can be used to induce lucidity. Yes that part I have it understood right...the RC does not create lucidity it s just a way to confirm once you are already lucid.

[yanickma]

I started re reading all the information I got from you guys and made a use of it since yesterday and I dont know if it s a coincidence but I got my fourth LD last night! I think it is definitively helping me!! The dream started in a pitch black limbo with someone crying and what made me lucid was that I said "Hey I want to talk to this person to know why she is crying!" then the dream image appeared to me (a house) and I did the RC and was ready to go (it lasted around 5 min)