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A few months ago on here there were a few threads started about mindfulness/lucid living. A lot of people seemed to be making the commitment to living life lucidly/mindfully with the purpose being to increase their chances of becoming lucid while asleep.
Have the people who made this commitment noticed an increase in their lucid dreams?
It's an interesting idea, B. Many of us should start doing reality checks just to see if we are still alive! :-)
I would think that mindfulness would improve both dream recall and lucidity. Interested to hear what others say.
Yes Dawg, I know a lot of people made quite a substantial commitment to it so it will be interesting to hear what they say.
I personally have never succeeded with "lucid living." One of the greatest periods of LDs came from a time when I barely thought about LDing and I didn't write down any dreams at all. I even often get a lucid when I return from vacations, in which I rarely record dreams or think about them. But then again I can't seem to use RCs to induce lucidity. I'm sure it must work on others, for I've heard them talk about it.
It's very difficult to remain mindful for long periods of time; it requires a great amount of will power. My approach to mindfulness now is to do it only when it adds to the quality of an experience. For example, if I'm walking through a forest the experience is enriched if I become aware of the smells, the birds singing, the wind rustling the leaves etc.
I've been doing reality checks and so on for a while, had some positive experience. It's not worth it. I just think about it occasionally these days and somewhat more intensely before going to sleep. Works like magic.
in my experience, i have had times where i was being exceptionally mindful of my waking experiences as a part of buddhist practices. i once had a lucid dream when not doing any kind of lucid dreaming practice or even dream journaling because i was so mindful constantly while awake that it transferred to my dreams and i just knew it wasn't real. recently i gave up on lucid practice because of low yield and also i was moving to a new location and frustrated. then i started being very mindful with buddhist practice again and once again i had an epic lucid with an amazing amount of control. my overall goal in life is to live mindfully so i imagine when i finally accomplish this as a constant thing i'll have lucid dreams frequently. a buddhist monk actually told me that he has dreams where he knows he's dreaming. he wasn't interested in lucid dreaming but i think we came to the agreement that mindfulness was the shared factor.