 Originally Posted by Patience108
The critical question or questions I suppose helps one to set ones intention? Could it be said that questioning reality is the main part of  setting intention?
No, questioning reality is not the same as setting intention. Setting intention is an act of clear, simple affirmation done just before you go to sleep, helping to get your head in the right place for lucidity, and perhaps setting up a bit of prospective memory come dreamtime. Though daytime work that includes questioning reality might aid in building expectation, just because your thoughts are on dreaming, it really has nothing to do with setting intention.
I will try to do the RC first then look around and question my reality
or as you say maybe at a completely different time - that helps to mix it up through out the day - for example quick reality checks can be done and at other times critical questioning can be done.
Do you think to engage as much as poss in the general mood of questioning reality helps more that RC?
All this leads me to one thought: questioning reality is a fine thing to do, but it should not be the only thing you do. To me, that critical question should always have an answer. In other words, when doing your critical questioning you are asking things like: why this place you are in is reality, what would be needed if it were a dream, or perhaps what is dreamlike about the reality through which you are currently wandering. Asking if your waking-life surroundings are not real seems unhelpful to me because you already know the answer:
I have always had a problem with questioning reality during waking-life, because in the end, unless you have some psychological issues or deeply held religious beliefs (say, Buddhist or Hindu), you will always know, innately, that the place you are in is reality, no matter how intricately you ask the questions. Also, come dreamtime, questioning reality during a NLD works exactly as it would in waking-life: you will innately know that the dreamworld you are navigating is real, because you can't remember otherwise. In a sense, questioning reality during a NLD has just as good if not a better likelihood of confirming that you are not dreaming.
What I would suggest instead (or in addition) is questioning the nature of your participation in reality: What is your transaction with your current local reality? What were you doing a few minutes ago? Where will you be in a few minutes? These things establish and strengthen your link with reality, and your self-awareness in the process. If during a NLD you make questions like this, there is a chance (if small) that you will pull in some self-awareness in the process, remember that you did not know where you were a few minutes ago, and become lucid. Plus, if these questions are asked during a LD, your self-awareness and appreciation of the dream being a part of you will increase dramatically, making your lucid experience much more fulfilling.
In brief: You really cannot sanely question reality without knowing the answer before your questions are asked. I would suggest that you ask also (or instead) questions about your participation in reality, or perhaps what aspects of your local reality are dream-like. Or just do a RRC.
DDA is I think - day dream awareness - you did mention above ; when engaging in the critical question to perhaps imagine the world you are in is a dream - can you elaborate on this point perhaps in unison with the idea of daydream awareness or however you would go with that method of imagining/daydreaming - thanks for your time
Ah! I didn't know that had an acronym!
I think I already just answered this, but I would make DDA secondary to developing the fundamentals. DDA is a fine exercise, and does help build expectation, but it is, again, just an exercise: you can only imagine that the world you are in is a dream, and you will do so with the full knowledge that your surroundings are quite real. In other words, no matter how elaborate your imaginings may be, you will still know that all this around you is reality, and you will find yourself shrugging off as unreal (or perhaps a little silly) those imaginings.
Again, when you are not lucid the world you are in is just as real to you as reality, so if you find yourself doing this exercise during a NLD you will likely do it in the same way as waking-life, by knowing that you are just imagining that your surroundings are a dream, but they are not.
So: Aside from being a good way to keep your mind on dreaming, building expectations, and perhaps giving you a better perspective of the dream after you are lucid (imagining that your dreamworld is a dream while lucid can yield some excellent results, including greater control and stronger lucidity), questioning reality should not be the sole aspect of your daytime LD work.
I personally believe that daydreams are very different from actual dreams, primarily because you are directly connected to waking-life throughout them: you can snap out of a daydream any time you want (like when the teacher or your boss ask you a question), and the imagery of daydreams tends to spring not from your unconscious building schemata but from your waking-life consciousness summoning things you intentionally wish to think about (that imagery tends to be much more linear as well). Imagining that your world is a dream is very different from a daydream, I think, because daydreams tend to reside in the realm of (intentional) fantasy while imagining the world as a dream is an intellectual exercise wherein you critically examine your surroundings or objects in them and try to redefine them as aspects of dream.
If I implied that daydreaming was the same as any of the stuff I mentioned above, it was not intended. However, this is just my opinion: as this is not my thread, others here might have a different take that is more relevant to the overall conversation here... perhaps daydreaming was discussed in a different context?
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