Thread: ADA Journal - Let's give this a proper try

Day 2 - Wednesday September 25 2013

So far, in terms of percentage of time awake spent practicing All Day Awareness, this experiment has blown away all my previous attempts. I think this is strong evidence for the usefulness of the S.M.A.R.T. goal approach combined with journal entries for accountability.

Yesterday from around 5PM onward I managed to stay aware more or less constantly. There was a break when I read a book for half an hour, since I could not enjoy the story without losing myself in it. Interestingly, while watching television I was able to stay aware and still enjoy the content! I was worried that since I was dissociating from my conscious experience it would drain all the emotion out of some activities, but I still found myself observing myself laughing at the jokes. Watching a motorcycle race somehow was more thrilling than usual since I was paying careful attention and could empathize more with the sensation of speed and effort experienced by the racers.

Contrary to what others have said, I do not find ADA to be stressful or tiring. I don't need to take time off to relax because I am not expending effort to be aware. You are always aware of something, just in an unfocused way. I think of it as energy that is being used 100% of the time, but not always in a useful way. By focusing it on your conscious experience you are harnessing the general background effort of daily life in a way that gets easier the more you do it.

I have found that the greatest challenge is maintaining awareness at work. When I have a lot of things to do and I am jumping rapidly from one task to the next, it is easy to get lost in my work. Historically this is what made me despair of ever succeeding at this technique, since I would realize that I've forgotten about ADA for 4, 5, or 8 hours at a stretch. I think this actually represents a plateau stage that needs to be broken through. My approach has been to concentrate on maintaining ADA during the most demanding tasks, whenever I have time to do them more slowly, so that I can train myself to have the ADA "program" running in the background. If I slip and forget, the program kicks in a short time later and reminds me to get back to it.

Today instead of forgetting to do ADA for basically the entire work day, I found myself only forgetting for an hour at a time, followed by maybe a solid hour of work + ADA combined. This looks like progress, but it's too early to tell after a single day. I am definitely aiming to have a background mental process running that gives me a constant feeling of "needing" to do ADA, similar to how an OCD person always feels a need to do something that never goes away.

This morning I remembered two dreams very easily, even though I did not repeat any mantras the night before or during WBTB, as I usually do in order to remember my dreams. Recall is a fickle thing, however, so I don't consider this evidence of anything. We'll see what happens over the next couple of days.





If anyone has any questions about this experience I'll answer when I get the chance.

Day 3 - Thursday September 26 2013

This morning I woke up and did not remember any dreams. However, I started being "aware" shortly after my eyes opened, so this is definitely getting closer and closer to being an ingrained habit. It's only been 3 days so far.

I'm surprised by how quickly it's getting easier to maintain awareness during some of the tasks that previously seemed impossible. Today I stayed aware, while working, from the moment I went to work until lunch time, about 4 hours straight. It's not a very long stretch but the fact that I maintained unbroken awareness while being productive at work is surprising. The way I managed to do work was to focus on only one task at a time, and not let my attention jump from one thing to another even though various things were clamoring for my attention. In this way I efficiently went through what I had to do without losing my place and getting lost in my work.

In general terms, my approach to these difficulties is to recognize which activities cause me to lose awareness, and then prepare myself to concentrate very carefully and deliberately when I know one of those activities or situations is coming up. For example, if I'm on my way to a meeting, I know there will be lots of people talking and I will need to switch my attention rapidly, so I concentrate especially hard on maintaining awareness as I enter the room. That seems to have been working.

Some situations which continue to present a challenge:

- eating meals. I think this might be due to the way we habitually zone out and multitask while eating.
- practicing sports / hobbies. I practiced on a pool table for a couple hours yesterday, and although I was fully concentrated on what I was doing I was not aware in the required context for this technique.
- When hanging out with my gf I get very distracted. If I concentrate on being aware she says I seem upset or pensive. This is definitely a tricky one!

I have also found that the inclination to lose my awareness tends to build like a wave. If I lose it once, I can readily bounce back, but as the day continues it occurs more and more frequently. What stops to trend is to consciously and deliberately affirm my intent and motivation to stay aware, especially in the face of more complex and demanding activities. If I do that periodically I can reset the clock and maintain awareness for another long stretch at a time. These stretches seem to be getting longer and easier.

Day 4 - Friday September 27 2013

I remembered one dream vaguely from after my WBTB this morning. Otherwise dream recall is the same as before. I don't think this method is improving my dream recall as much as simple mantras do. This evening I will do a mantra before bed and another one during WBTB to see if it gets back up to where I'd expect (1 or 2 dreams a night).

I seem to have plateaued in terms of how easy it is to retain awareness. It requires periodic re-enforcement of my determinationin order to have unbroken blocks of awareness at work. Motivation is slipping.

There has definitely been an improvement, though, because even though I find myself forgetting to be aware throughout the day I am constantly reminded of it. In other words, I don't go for long stretches of time where I forget about ADA; instead I might forget for 20 minutes and then remember suddenly and resume my efforts. In this way, the worst case scenario is that I am practicing ADA at least every 20 minutes throughout the day, which is pretty good. If the average dream lasts around 5-20 minutes, and I develop of habit of doing ADA in 20 minute intervals, the odds are higher that one interval will occur during a dream.

I think identifying activities that cause you to lose awareness and concentrating specifically on those daily episodes has the effect of reinforcing the idea of doing ADA throughout the rest of the day, simply because it has a strong impact on your memory to be concentrating so carefully during those times. If you just do ADA when it is easiest (such as when waiting for something, or walking somewhere), it will only occur to you in those situations and the habits you develop will not be of any use during your dreams.

Dreams are generally very intense experiences; very strange and emotional, most of the time, and if you can't maintain awareness during something as stressful as a simple conversation, there's not much chance of doing it in the midst of an intense dream. That's why I'm focusing on the difficult, "intense" situations. The tricky part is planning for them, since they tend to occur unexpectedly. For now I'm focusing on the ones I know are about to occur, such as when I leave a room full of people: when I return I know to get ready and concentrate extra hard.

Day 7 - Monday September 30 2013

I had to stop this exercise over the weekend. I found that my motivation was just insufficient to do it through all the hectic activities over the weekend. Today I started up again with renewed motivation, with great results, so I think that taking a break was essential. Not having tried this before, I think doing 7 days in a row might have been over-reaching for a first attempt. Doing 3-4 days in a row followed by a break and then resuming makes a little more sense--it's how meditation retreats are structured in real life. Usually people go away for a day and night, and then when they feel they're ready they go for 3 or 4 days, then a week, then a month, etc.

As I get more familiar with the state of mind, I am picking up on many subtleties. For example, today I noticed that it takes a while to "settle in" to a state of awareness. The first time you start (in a day, time of day doesn't matter), it is easy to lose concentration. Once you have managed to maintain awareness for about 45-60 minutes, you pass a tipping point and it actually becomes quite easy to maintain. A big sign that you're there is that you start reacting to things "normally" while retaining awareness. For example, you might see something unexpected that makes you laugh. Normally you'd lose awareness while laughing, or if you remained aware you would not laugh because you would be too focused on the exercise. If you laugh AND remain easily aware of yourself laughing, it's a new experience.

I also noticed that it is sometimes difficult to tell if you are being aware or not. It's hard to describe, but when you are noticing things passively and you do it for a long time, it starts to blur the line between paying attention and spacing out. If I feel that uncertainty I return to the basic practice of paying careful attention to my senses rather than to the context of my conscious experience.

Anyway, the big question: after four solid days of practicing, what impact has this had on my lucid dreaming efforts? None, so far. My recall has not improved. By inference I can say that I haven't had any lucid dreams, but I can't prove that part since I might not have remembered having any even if they occurred. An active nightlife has made it difficult to sleep properly this week and to do mantras and stuff to improve my recall, but this week should be better.

Going forward I'm going to do a pattern of two days on, one day off for the rest of the week. It seems to be better for my motivation to small-chunk this effort. Also, I would expect to see an exponential results curve for this exercise rather than a linear one, since there seems to be a very steep learning curve in the beginning. Maybe I won't see a single result until week 2 or 3, which is depressing to think about but very possible.

Day 10 - Thursday October 3 2013

So, 7 days have gone by and I think that, for me at least, this is a difficult enough technique that it must be small-chunked no matter how earnest you are in the execution. I am going to continue this journal and practicing, though, because it seems like I'm making progress and insights into a good approach. For example:

I think that while All Day Awareness is a good name, it's slightly misleading. A more precise name might be "Habitual Episodic Awareness."

Explanation: I've noticed that as I continue to improve at ADA, there are certain situations or activities where ADA becomes so habitual that it's effortless, and other situations where it is hard to remember to do it, or to do it continuously without getting distracted. For example, if you practice awareness while walking to and from the bathroom, very quickly you will automatically start doing it. The thought of walking to the bathroom just becomes habitually associated with awareness, and you start doing it every time, without fail. Other examples are while brushing your teeth, or while getting dressed, opening a door, etc.

I think the ultimate goal of ADA, unbroken awareness throughout all times and activities, might just be the gradual accumulation of several habits of being aware during various activities or situations, until you have such a large collection of habits that it becomes easy to do it throughout the day.

I think there's a shortcut here, where you can start with habits that occur the most frequently, and that occur in both dreams and reality. This is, of course, a system very similar to the concept behind reality checks, except it doesn't rely on something weird or uniquely dream-like to work. The trick is to small-chunk the habits in a way where they are attainable, they stick, and can be expanded. They just have to be specific enough to trigger a mental association, and also short and easy enough to actually do.

While thinking it over I realized that all my dreams have one activity in common, so prevalent that I didn't even consider it a dream sign: I am always talking to people. I don't do it all day, but I do it throughout the day, most of the time in little episodes lasting just a few minutes. This is very similar to the length of interaction with dream characters. I am focusing now on awareness during conversation, especially quick interactions. Over the course of a long conversation it is currently impossible for me to retain awareness, but "low risk" conversations such as small talk or interactions with strangers, etc, are much more achievable.

Day 8 - Friday October 4 2013

Today I remembered three dreams without much effort. I wrote them all down in the journal--could just be a fluke.

I think a good way to small-chunk my attempt to remain awareness whenever interacting with people is to focus first on retaining awareness whenever I see a person. I did it all morning during my commute and by the time I got to the office I would feel the impulse to start practicing awareness whenever I saw a person approaching me.

During the day it became difficult since I was dealing with the same people, over and over, so the novelty effect was not so strong as to trigger the impulse I was working on earlier. Still, I kept the effort up throughout the day. If you remember to try, you're still technically remembering, so that's progress.

Day 15 - Friday October 11 2013

I have continued to small-chunk the difficult task of maintaining awareness, and have been experimenting and reading up on different approaches at the same time. It has led to a few insights:

I have noticed that the use of force is sometimes counterproductive when it comes to things like attention, consciousness, sleep, etc. The mind is not something we can control through force of will; this is the underlying principle of meditation. The approach to restless mind is passive observation rather than forcefully trying to quiet it down by blocking out unwanted thoughts.

When it comes to maintaining constant awareness, results don't seem to correlate with the strength of effort expended. If I try harder, if I concentrate intently and try to bully myself into maintaining awareness through a given situation, it doesn't produce better results.

Accidentally, I stumbled upon the realization that a specific type of attitude is needed. The context for your attention seems to make a big difference. If I observe everything with curiosity and a sense of exploration, rather than through the sense of a greedy mouth trying to suck up every detail around me without rest, I stay relaxed and attention seems to extend further and easier.

This realization occurred after reading a book that advised a person seeking permanent awareness to dwell constantly on the thought of "I am" and to investigate the nature of personal experience by systematically observing and eliminating things that can not be part of yourself. For example, you are not your body, so you can observe your body as it moves around and does things, trying to see why it does them and how it feels to do them. You can also observe certain of your thoughts and emotions, since after a while it becomes clear that they arise by themselves without any help from "you," whatever you are. In this way the set of things that you observe continues to expand, along with the quality and duration of your awareness.

This is a large and complex subject that is difficult to explain in a quick post, but I'm not writing a treatise here, just milestones on my journey.