Thread: Daydream and Dreamlet Awareness Training

As I typed this title, I saw Oreo's "The Daydream Awareness Technique" thread. But the content of that thread varies from this totally untested idea I've started experimenting with, so I thought I might as well type it out here to document it.

Daydreams

I've always suspected that some people, more than others, are easy victims of the narrative inertia of dreaming. For instance, some of us just get entranced by a good drama more than others, and we are less inclined to pause and become critically aware mid-stream during a really compelling story. I am personally the sort of person who gets carried into powerful daydreams during the day all the time. I'll be driving behind someone in rush-hour, and minutes later, my heartbeat will be rising as I've lived out a weirdly complex accident scenario in my head. My wife has a hard time enjoying movies because she's always criticizing every logical inconsistency, whereas I usually watch with my eyes glued, forgetting the outside world exists.

As I started experimenting with reality testing, I realized there was zero likelihood that I would stop to do a reality check sponteneously while in the grips of those really immersive daydreams, and I reasoned that it was equally unlikely I'd do it in a really immersive dream. Perhaps I am just the sort of person who is frequently "in the clouds," and this might be an obstacle to DILD practice. For months, I was trying to associate reality checks with dream signs. Motorcycles were a good one in my case. But I was riding dream motorcycles all over the place and waking up wondering how in the world the twenty reality checks I did during the day failed me.

My theory now, is that a daydream is one of the things, in waking life, that most approximates actual dreaming. So I've begun to purposely indulge my daydreaming habit for the purpose of reality test training. Will it work? I have no clue. I've lately been averaging about one DILD each week and just started doing this earnestly yesterday. Here is the plan:


Daydream Training

1) Pick a time where my mind can wander. Perhaps during a break, or during a long commute. I'm going to try to commit to a good hour of daydream training each day.

2) Choose a daydream scenario and let it rip . . . Maybe that guy in the tan car is a spy, or there is an alien waiting under that distant overpass. Imagine the narrative unfolding until my mind starts filling in the blanks and I'm engaged in a daydream that has its own narrative inertia.

3) As soon as I feel my emotions getting entangled in the daydream, and sense the daydream gaining momentum on its own, I STOP. I think, "Wait a second, this isn't real. This is just a dream," and marval at my brain's ability to tell such an engaging story.

4) Start over immediately with a new daydream and repeat.


Using WILD Dreamlets as a Training Tool

I've also decided not to view my WILD attempts as actual WILD attempts for a while, but rather as a really good chance to do awareness training. This is similar to the practice discussed in the thread I mentioned above, but my mindset is a little different, so it's worth mentioning.

Even better than daydreams, the HI and dreamlets that form as you fall asleep are really the closest things to actual dreams that we experience while awake. So why not use them to train reality checks as well?

Dreamlet Training:

1) Go about my normal pre-WILD routine. Relax my body, meditate on one point, use breathing exercises. Do all the things that eventually lead to the "noise" of WILDing: auditory fragments, HI, and full-on dreamlets.

2) Passively observe the imagery just as I am supposed to do when attempting to WILD. But counterintuitive to standard WILD practice, PURPOSEFULLY DISENGAGE from the imagery as soon as it starts feeling powerful. Say, "This is just a dream forming, it isn't real!" and marvel at how convincing it was for a moment just then, how it stole my attention and began immersing me in its distracting narrative.

3) Lay back, relax, let the noise start, and do it again.

I realize that this clearly wrecks a person's chance of pulling off an actual WILD, but who am I kidding? I'm not going to WILD anyway. I'll likely just get stuck again at that delicate spot between wakefulness and dreaming. So why not use this fascinating hour-and-a-half show of closed-eye hypnogic imagery as a training session, associating reality checks a dozen times with actual dream imagery? Oh how freeing. No more frustration every time I pull away from that forming dream scene, and I'm actually doing something productive!


That's it. Hopefully all my reality checking will be associated with images that have an actual dream-like quality. I have no clue if it will make a difference, but it can't hurt to try something new.