How to do self awareness correctly?

What is the general concept of practicing self awareness? I know there's probably an infinite amount of ways to practice It that would provide you with lucids, am I right?
I just know that some people do self awareness really simply and they seem to get lots of lucids from it, and then there's others that just make it EXTREMELY confusing and include all these new agey principles to it. It honestly just turned me off to the idea of self awareness in general even though I hear its supposed to be easier than ADA. I like ADA because its so straight forward. Remain aware of your senses and that's it. It doesn't include a billion different ways that you can practice it, and you really don't have to worry about if your doing it incorrectly as long as you understand the technique. I just think there should be a proper explanation for self awareness. Also, I tried sageous explanation on self awareness, which I found pretty confusing so I was hoping someone else can give me an easier explaination on it and make it a bit easier to understand.

I'm not a stranger to self awareness, in fact I actually practiced it before, before terminating it thinking I was doing it incorrectly because I wasn't doing it the way others were. I thought there was some text book tutorial on self awareness, failing to realize that everyone practices it differently. I'm just wondering what is the general concept of self awareness?

The way I used to practice self awareness is simply by paying attention to everything I do through out the day, and always being aware of the fact that what ever I am experiencing could simply be me dreaming. I didn't practice this long enough to notice any real effects from it, but it did make my dreams more vivid and story like and I started to recall more. I'm sure if I stuck with this long enough I would have started to get lucids from it.

Is this a correct form of practicing self awareness? I would like to know the general idea of what self awareness really is so that in the future I can think up new ways of being self aware without copying someone else's technique.

I hear of people practicing it by pretending to be in a dream 24/7, I hear others practice it by being aware of there thoughts and emotions, I hear others practice it by just being aware of one sense of themselves. I even hear of people who do a reflection technique and constantly ask themselves if everything makes sense and what they were doing earlier in the day. I hope you can understand where I'm coming from with this. Its just easy to feel confused and lost when understanding this whole thing.

I really do hope I get this all figured out so I can finally get some real practice in.

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I hear of people practicing it by pretending to be in a dream 24/7, I hear others practice it by being aware of there thoughts and emotions, I hear others practice it by just being aware of one sense of themselves. I even hear of people who do a reflection technique and constantly ask themselves if everything makes sense and what they were doing earlier in the day. I hope you can understand where I'm coming from with this. Its just easy to feel confused and lost when understanding this whole thing.

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I feel where you comming from with this I would say. At first glance, you did seem to be asking for how to define what "Self awareness" is, based on the different approaches that you listed above. But what I actually think you are asking, is which one of these approaches is the "best" one to go with?. If this is what you wounder about, then you first have to define what it is you are seeking or wanting to accomplish with this so called "Self awareness"?

I totally agree with you on every point you made. I too suffer with the same confusion, me personally though, I like to think of self-awareness as the size of your awareness bubble and how often its used/integrated with your other selves. You gotta appreciate that we are talking about the mind here and so its naturally going to receive answers which are not concrete, very hard to study the mind :P

Self-awareness is knowledge of yourself. To increase self-awareness, you learn about yourself.

I was really just talking about the different ways people practice it haha. This post was mainly about how go practice it though.

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Originally Posted by dolphin

Self-awareness is knowledge of yourself. To increase self-awareness, you learn about yourself.

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Woah thanks, I thought it was something like that just wasn't sure. You put it really simply. So what I was doing, was intfact correct. Or I could have done it by being aware my thouhhts, the things I do throughout the day, what location am I in and does it make sense, do I know any of the people I am with, I assume ada is a form of self awareness as well even though it focuses on external senses as well.

Thanks dolphin, I can now get back to practicing self awareness again the way I used to. I'll also probably continue my ada practice as well seeing as though I dont want to abadon all of my progress with it lol.

Next things up, providing myself with a consistent sleep schedule.
Yesterday I went to bed at like 7pm and woke up naturally at 12 am. I was originally planning on waking up for a WBTB a few hours later though, I don't really like when I wake up early like this lol. So tonight I'll be going to bed at 9:00 or so, that's the time I used to go to bed in the past and it provided me with good recall and vivid dreams once I stuck with it

Mindfulness would be more appropriate IMO for self-awareness, it basically is self-awareness. As you mentioned, ADA focused on the external environment. While paying attention to anything raises awareness, it's not necessarily self-awareness.

As far as "how to" guide for self-awareness, I think mindfulness books are a great source. Some very approachable ones are "Mindfulness in Plain English" and "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life". Another one I just heard about is "The Mindful Geek" which claims to approach the subject from a secular standpoint without any "spiritualism." I don't mind spirituality in books, but this one still might be interesting.

In a nutshell, feel yourself strongly present in the moment, for as long as you can, as much as you can. Avoid autopilot/mindless/zombie modes. Observe your emotions, reactions to experience, and work to control your reactions to experience as opposed to experience controlling you.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

Mindfulness would be more appropriate IMO for self-awareness, it basically is self-awareness. As you mentioned, ADA focused on the external environment. While paying attention to anything raises awareness, it's not necessarily self-awareness.

As far as "how to" guide for self-awareness, I think mindfulness books are a great source. Some very approachable ones are "Mindfulness in Plain English" and "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life". Another one I just heard about is "The Mindful Geek" which claims to approach the subject from a secular standpoint without any "spiritualism." I don't mind spirituality in books, but this one still might be interesting.

In a nutshell, feel yourself strongly present in the moment, for as long as you can, as much as you can. Avoid autopilot/mindless/zombie modes. Observe your emotions, reactions to experience, and work to control your reactions to experience as opposed to experience controlling you.

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Going to read this book now and finish it today since its rather short. Man, I'm hoping this answers all my questions for awareness lol. If it does, this would be like another Bible for lucid dreaming just like ETWOLD, if not THE Bible. Well I'd say ETWOLD is the first Bible of lding since it really explains everything, but this book may be the bible for actually getting lucid.

This self awareness stuff is deep. Answering your question and offering my opinion, i think there are two valid ways to practice:

1- the conventional way: just knowing what is happening in your mind, what thoughts are present. Don´t need to do 24 hours, but should be done frequently and naturally. Even if you don´t achieve lucidity on the spot, it will come along with ever increasing insights into your mind and others

2- the spiritual way: you try to unveil the glitch of the matrix and realize that this waking life is also a dream, and lucidity will follow like a shade.
if you shatter the notion of a perceiver subject ( and therefore of a distinct perceived object), that duality won´t reassert itself in your dreams.

So, i think there's no way to go wrong if you follow one of those two approaches (or both) :)

So I read the book and I didn't really learn anything new lol. Basically mindfulness meditation is sitting, focusing on the breath and not getting caught up in thoughts and worries and other experiences. I still don't understand how in the world this is supposed to help me with lucid dreaming. What am I supposed to go around paying attention to my breath all day lol?

Why cant I just pay attention to everything I do throughout the day whenever I remember to do so, and always remember that I could always be dreaming. Isn't this self awareness ?

You can do whatever you want to :).

Which book is the one you read? It doesn't sound like "Mindfulness in Plain English," or I think you would have gotten more out of it.

A key excerpt:

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In vipassana meditation we cultivate this special way of seeing life. We train ourselves to see reality exactly as it is, and we call this special mode of perception mindfulness.

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If you achieve this, what reality do you think will jump out to you when you are dreaming? That you are dreaming. QED.

I was reading here on dreamviews the "grand battles" of ADA vs. self-awareness. Last year I was practicing ADA and self awareness (where the I AM is the basis). I realized that ADA has a "invisible border". It becomes frustrating, and heavy. If I had enough motivation-will-power, and I was not giving up, then after a while I was hm... somehow comming to a "next level" where it was easy to stop the thinking and just observing the world (my focus is mostly on visual senses). It is a fantastic state of the mind. It is so mindblowing, that I beginn to think about it, and than it is over. When I made it to this "second level", than I was saying: I am a lucid dreamer, so that I was feeling in my bones, that I am a lucid dreamer. After this I had always super vivid dreams and lucids, half lucids. It was some days, that I got to this euphoric clearness in 5-10 minutes, and it happend that I was fighting almost the whole afternoon, to have this super clean awareness.

When I was doing self-awareness, I focused on stopping thinking, what means, catching the thoughts as fast as possible, and trying to have as many times possible a feeling of I AM (the observer). You can not observe your unconscious thoughts. If you focus in your head and there is some thinking going on, than you might search some help. You can analyze your thoughts. You are zooming out for some seconds, and than you come back and you can "see" what you was thinking (the eastern idea, of observing the flying birds on the sky, is in my opinion not possible, the birds dissapear when you really look at them) . If I am aware enough, than I am catching my thoughts in 1-2 seconds. They are just some incomplete beginnings of some stories. They dont have a full meaning yet. Example: (*=awareness)**********yesterd...*************my brothe...*********(the "yesterd..." has nothing to do with my "brothe..." They are separated attempts from the mind (ego?) to create a unconscious dream story). There is very little to "observ" (what is imposible). If I am aware and having thoughts in my mind, than I am thinking. I use this two definition for thoughts: daydreaming and thinking. One is a unconscious dreaming, and the other is awareness, with the focus on using thoughts. So, I was doing self-awareness. I run in the same barrier, what I experienced with ADA. And...I was fighting myself through it, and I arrived to the same "higher intensity of the beeing". I made the same intentions, and the result, again, was vivid+lucid+half lucid.

To be ownest, I have no idea how to induce the "animals awareness" (what in theory is some sort of "raw ADA", and is not good and/or enough). I dont understand how can here be two types of awareness. External and internal? For me every experiment (ok, hard work) with awareness has led to the same bliss of higher state of awareness. Maybe I must work with fear. Fear from hunger, from enemies, from not mating... :) It is something like ready to jump, and not awareness. For me, I think, the best choice is my head. Making ADA with the focus on what is going on in my head.

The other important component, is the intention. There are peoples, doing a long time mindfulness. There is a effect on the dreaming, and there can happen, that they have a lucid dream. But, it is nothing like Wow! They have a different intention and expectation (harmony in family, good healt, stopping stress...). Anything I am doing for awareness, I do it primarily for having lucid dreams. I think, this is very important to know. It should be a "backround constant".

And the last thing. For me this is the most very very very important stuf. The most mystical of all. I mentioned this: motivation-will-power. I go to make WILD, or mindfulness, or ADA, and there are days when I know that this will now work. I somehow have the confident mindset to make a good WILD or a good meditation. Than I have lucid dreams in a row. There is some pluss there, that gives the first push in the direction of lucid dreaming. Other days I dont have it, and I drift away. I cant make a long stillness in my head or a good WILD. I want to do it, and I cant believe how easy I become defocused. It is some frustrating haze on my mind. My brain is saying, you can do it, and how easy is it to do when I have the motivation-will-power thing, but I am just struggling. I can just hope, that the awareness excerises and the intention to lucid dream will give me more days with this "motivation-will-power".

Uh, I hope you understand my english (no time now for checking my errors).