Thread: How on earth can some of you get your awareness so high?!

Hi all, I've been an off and on lucid dreamer for the past 3 years, only attaining lucidity once or twice. There will be times where I have a 2 month period of dream journaling then stop because of lack of results.

There are some of you which say there are points in which you cannot tell the difference between the dream world and the real world and my question is how on earth can you get your awareness that high? I feel it'd be so much easier to gain lucidity if things were like that for me. When I wake up my dreams usually feel like a super super vague memory that happened so quick.

I would love gaining lucidity for once and holding onto it. I just can't seem to get the correct precursors to reaching it though

Thanks ahead of time.

Never stop keeping a dream journal, even if you don't think you're seeing results. Try and make it a priority to at least write something down even if it's just "I could hardly remember anything" or "I didn't remember my dream from last night but I will tonight". For some people it comes easily and it requires very little effort but for others it can take months or years of consistent practice. Attaining lucidity once or twice is still an achievement, it proves that it's not impossible for you. You should celebrate your successes when you have them rather than focusing on how frequently you get them

I think you develop your awareness a little at a time, Blaed, with high levels of it emerging with practice and regular attention rather than some specific technique or shortcut.

Also, dream-journaling, though important in its own right, has very little to do with developing awareness or self-awareness. DJ'ing is used to develop your dream recall, as well as your level of comfort and familiarity with dreaming in general. Is this familiarity what you were really asking about?

I noticed another interesting thing in your OP:

Originally Posted by Blaed

There are some of you which say there are points in which you cannot tell the difference between the dream world and the real world and my question is how on earth can you get your awareness that high? I feel it'd be so much easier to gain lucidity if things were like that for me. When I wake up my dreams usually feel like a super super vague memory that happened so quick.

To me, not being able to tell the difference between waking-life and dreaming-life illustrates a certain lack of awareness, and not heightened awareness. If you are consistently aware of your state, discerning the dream world from the real world is not difficult, even when memories of dreams become more prominent in your mind (and they will!).

i used to have the exact same problem until one dream changing lucid what i did was i dived into a really deep pool which for me is calming as i a a competitie swimmer and spend most day at the pool so anyway i sank right to the bottom and just sat at the bottom of the pool meditating and its unexplainable the feeling its almost like and intense high it feels like you can do anything and are completely free so i suggest find what keeps you calm in the start of the dream and try meditate but i know that is time consuming good luck and well done

I don't think awareness is supposed to be a constant struggle, but rather something that you get used to until you are extra aware without even thinking about it.
You could compare this with driving a car - when you first start taking driving lessons you will be super-focused on every single thing, and you will inevitably feel uncomfortable about a lot of things.
But eventually you will gain more and more experience, until it starts to feel very natural and effortless all of a sudden.
I think Lucid Living and All Day Awareness should be approached the same way - it should be something that feels "fluent" and something that becomes second nature.
Indeed, I think the whole point of LL and ADA is to "wake up" and rekindle your fascination of waking life.

One very important realization is that waking life actually is a kind of dream, because a lot of things that we experience only exist in our minds - for example, colours and audible sound do not really exist "out there", those experiences are just the way your brain distinguishes between wavelengths, so that you can read and intepret the world more easily - in fact, a more correct definition of colours and sound is that colours are wavelengths in the visible light spectrum and sound is longitudinal waves moving through a medium.
It's the same thing with heat and cold as well - the only thing that actually happens when something melts or freezes is that atoms gain or lose kinetic energy, so that it becomes easier or harder to separate them - but the feeling of "heat" and "cold" is something that your brain makes up, since it tells you something about the current state of your surroundings, and whether you should seek for hotter or colder places.

For these reasons, I tend to like thinking of waking life as a form of dream - it makes even the dullest ordinary day feel fairly exciting, and it also keeps me motivated to practice lucid dreaming, since that "lucid feeling" is always present to me.

I second Sageous--it's a work in progress. You get better as you go along. Awareness can also be developed through meditation, though it does not seem to be necessary to become lucid.

Progressing in any discipline takes time and consistent effort. The number I've seen bandied about is that to become an "expert" in most fields takes about 10,000 hours of study and practice.

On and off practice, 2 months of DJ and then stopping, you can't really expect to see much progress.

To really succeed at any serious discipline, you have to want it in your guts so thoroughly that you don't take "no" for an answer and if something doesn't work for you, you don't stop researching, experimenting, consulting with experts, and trying things until you find what works for you. You have to also really enjoy it in order to keep up that level of continuous commitment.