Thread: Awareness Awareness

Heh, about this, do you ever almost force yourself to believe its a dream? Out of sheer desperation to be lucid, or because your science test is nightmarish?

I find that actually seems to work for me sometimes. I focus really hard on proving that I'm dreaming, and then I sort of have a little lapse where I think "wait, what if I really am dreaming". Weird experience.

Originally Posted by Arutad

Yes, what did you want to say about it?

I was curious how you felt about epoche's.

Personally, I mostly agree with what you are saying but I think (I am not certain) that you may be missing a critical point in these methods.

Firstly, I must assert that it is my opinion that lucid dreams are facades and do not really exist. Instead, it is the unconscious dancing with the idea of being able to control its dreams (dreaming of lucid dreams).

Considering that, I still think interpreting dreams and examining them tells you a lot about yourself. By trying to lucid dream, you inadvertently bring a lot of attention to your self.

When using these lucid methods, it is really a matter of bringing awareness to your self. While they may be placebo's and really just a ruse at first, they are necessities to help bring self-awareness (which I think is what you are speaking of).

So, I do not disagree with you.. but I am curious if you find this coincides with what you are saying. Epoche's being a fundamental part of learning about yourself.

What do you think...?

~

Originally Posted by 44CalibreSunlight

I'm walking down the road watching it move under my feet. I remember awareness and look at the road again and it's as if the entire span of time before that has a lessened amount of significance. like you weren't aware untill that point, and everything before it was a memory, and can only not be a memory until you become aware again.

And that ^ paragraph is supposed to contradict itself, because I said it was a feeling, and feelings can be elusive of logic.

That's called attention.That's a mundane word, unlike awareness, but true. You were focused on your thoughts, and quite likely not that much either, so in fact you were walking down the street and behaving chaotically: you were jumping from one thought to another, looking around briefly, then jumping back to your thoughts, etc. And then you decided to focus on a single object instead.

So in fact you believe into "more focus = more awareness". Please forget what somebody else told you, or what you read, and explain why you think so. People above believed into "more self-focus = more awareness", your version is a bit different.

Maybe I'm cynical, but I think the word awareness is redundant in both cases, it's used only in order to tie it to LDing, because it sounds "kind of the same" to lucidity. However lucidity is about awareness of being asleep, not about anything else that you choose to label as awareness...

Originally Posted by TJuulsgaard

If you read up on just about any book about "Dream Yoga" you will see that awarenes plays a very large role in getting lucidity in your dreams as well as in your waking life.

In all books that I read about Dream Yoga they spoke about another kind of "awareness", not related to self-focus or concentration.

And if you mean the usual buddhist meditation, then I happen to know buddhists who practice it and none of them is lucid dreaming from it. Although I do know some who managed to drag this behavior into their dreams. For me that's enough to assert that it doesn't work the way people imagine, although I myself haven't dragged this kind of behavior into dreams to check first-handedly.

Originally Posted by O'nus

Firstly, I must assert that it is my opinion that lucid dreams are facades and do not really exist. Instead, it is the unconscious dancing with the idea of being able to control its dreams (dreaming of lucid dreams).

I see what you mean, but I don't know whether I agree with you. It's difficult to decide. In past I figured out that all methods are a ruse, so I used only direct desire-induction and of course had a chance to gain suspicion about how all that is being done in LDs is not real but programmed beforehand during the day. I also have theories on failures that can explain nicely why seemingly programmed actions didn't happen, and it all ties in quite nicely, but there's no real method of "checking" it.

In the same desire-induced way I learnt to execute particular actions that I wanted quite fine, without being lucid, I think it's what is clasically called dream-programming. The preciseness of executed actions is overwhelming, it's not something that happens "kind of that way", but precisely what you wanted, only without the memory of why you're doing it. That makes taking decisions during lucidity a dubious thing.

Considering that, I still think interpreting dreams and examining them tells you a lot about yourself. By trying to lucid dream, you inadvertently bring a lot of attention to your self.

May I ask what's your motivation for LDing, is it really a desire to learn about yourself through them? I think that if I believed completely that LDing is fake, I'd have dropped it. I'm curious what keeps you going.

When using these lucid methods, it is really a matter of bringing awareness to your self. While they may be placebo's and really just a ruse at first, they are necessities to help bring self-awareness (which I think is what you are speaking of).

Well as I said, I use desire-induced methods, so I can't see how epoche would tie in there. Or what it has in common with self-awareness. All I know is that when you're asleep you keep "remembering" things, thoughts, and desires from the day properly enough, and your desires about LDing have great chances of being remembered and played out. If you want to be aware that you're asleep, you'll remember it and become aware. If you want to do something, you'll remember it and do it. Etc. It can happen not once, but many times per night, mostly dependant on strength of your desire and on contradicting forces.

It would help if you spoke more clearly about your own methods. Are they alike in any way?

So, I do not disagree with you.. but I am curious if you find this coincides with what you are saying. Epoche's being a fundamental part of learning about yourself.

For me epoche is a concept that doesn't coincide with living. If you've reduced your notions to the pure state a la Planotic ideas, then I can't see how you'd function. Would only emotional stuff be gone, wouldn't something else be gone with it? So it might be good in meditation, for a short period of time, but certainly not as a way to live. However there are people who interprete epoche in a totally different way, as a method to purify notions that wouldn't interfere with life but would change the very nature of your mind, bringing it back to its "natural" state. Are you one of them?

Originally Posted by Arutad

May I ask what's your motivation for LDing, is it really a desire to learn about yourself through them? I think that if I believed completely that LDing is fake, I'd have dropped it. I'm curious what keeps you going.

No, you missed it - learning to LD is a facade. I once truly believed in it.. but during that process I learned more about myself and then came to the conclusion that it was fake.. it is all about self-revelation. The deep motivation to LD is really a sense of control in life - think if you really had that feeling in your conscious life all the time.

Well as I said, I use desire-induced methods, so I can't see how epoche would tie in there. Or what it has in common with self-awareness.

You don't know what epoche's have in common with self-awareness..? I don't know how you can say that - they are almost synonymous if not a function of each other.

How do you discern between the two..?

It would help if you spoke more clearly about your own methods. Are they alike in any way?

I don't have any methods anymore. I just dream and infrequently have "lucid dreams".

Once I came to my previous revelations - I did not need to strive for anything anymore.

For me epoche is a concept that doesn't coincide with living. If you've reduced your notions to the pure state a la Planotic ideas, then I can't see how you'd function. Would only emotional stuff be gone, wouldn't something else be gone with it? So it might be good in meditation, for a short period of time, but certainly not as a way to live. However there are people who interprete epoche in a totally different way, as a method to purify notions that wouldn't interfere with life but would change the very nature of your mind, bringing it back to its "natural" state. Are you one of them?

Well yes and no. If you want to truth, it is the idea that lead me to eventually worship the idea of death.

I have a great respect for death and it was not revealed to myself till I started treasuring epoche's and phenomenology. Death is the greatest revelation and only in the moment, in an epoche, can you really appreciate the fragility of each moment and the inconsequence of your consciousness. Simultaneously, you revere the miraculousness of having a consciousness.

What do you think..? Does this make sense to you?

~

Nice few replies came up int he time it took me to make that smiley face>_>

Anyway I don't know what to tell you. I feel what I know is awareness whether I can adequately explain it or not.

it's easy to make foolishness of an idea such as this in the first place, because it's such a phenomenon of the mind, but it appears to be working, as my dream recall has been improving a lot lately. As in the last few days, and I feel as if I'm giving second thoughts to occurrences in my dreams a lot more now.

edit:

Well as I said, I use desire-induced methods, so I can't see how epoche would tie in there. Or what it has in common with self-awareness. All I know is that when you're asleep you keep "remembering" things, thoughts, and desires from the day properly enough, and your desires about LDing have great chances of being remembered and played out. If you want to be aware that you're asleep, you'll remember it and become aware. If you want to do something, you'll remember it and do it. Etc. It can happen not once, but many times per night, mostly dependant on strength of your desire and on contradicting forces.

Okay, I just read this, I understand exactly where you are coming from now.
Your method off desire -induced techniques basically supports a range of methods one of which being the concept of being aware or wanting to be aware in real life and in dreams, so it really just stretches the awareness idea back into a broader spectrum and different theories on why this particular method may work .

That's my understanding of it now, anything I got wrong?

No trolling Arutad.

But seriously I think you might be ever so slightly mistaken about what I'm talking about when I say the word: Awareness

This is nothing tangible like thinking, it's more like a very experiential and vivid sense of being alive, not in a conceptual sense, but rather a DIRECT KNOWING which will always defy our attempts to understand it abstractly (with the mind).

When you think about it, it's really kind of absurd that we have the word awareness, as if by knowing the word we have even the slightest conceptual understanding of what it is being pointed to. I supposed it's just the way humans tend to communicate that causes us to habitually label everything with a concept and then assume that we know everything (or even anything) about what's really there and being labeled.

I honestly hope you understand I'm not trying to prove a point to you, but rather to show you something that I can't really talk about, but which actually has enormously significant implications, not the least of which relates to lucid dreaming.

What I think the OP was trying to point out was that by putting attention, or focusing, on our actual direct, REAL EXPERIENCE of life from moment to moment, we will find it much easier and possibly even effortless to realize that we are dreaming. When one begins to make a habit of focusing on Awareness rather than the continuous and relentless stream of thoughts that fills Awareness, they will understand what we're talking about, and why this is so.

I suggest you try to notice if you ever find yourself overwhelmed by a sense of "RIGHTNESS," or a need to prove someone wrong, or an almost unconscious certainty about something before you actually check to see if this is the case. These are signs of being "lost in thought," something that inevitably happens to everyone but doesn't have to keep happening. You may find it difficult at first to break out of the prison of your own trance of mind, but once it becomes habitual it doesn't even require any force of will, it is contagious and will infect your whole being in a delightful embrace.

Here are some links to a couple of scenes from a great movie called Waking Life (which coincidentally is about lucid dreaming) that I feel almost perfectly capture what I'm trying to express here. You might need to watch them a few times to catch what I'm saying, but it's in there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy3yD5K0gvE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDWEkzaBULQ

Thats cool, increasing awareness by having it in your head all the time.

Originally Posted by Ethereal

Heh, about this, do you ever almost force yourself to believe its a dream? Out of sheer desperation to be lucid, or because your science test is nightmarish?

I find that actually seems to work for me sometimes. I focus really hard on proving that I'm dreaming, and then I sort of have a little lapse where I think "wait, what if I really am dreaming". Weird experience.

Wow! Something weird is happening here.

Two nights ago, I had my first lucid experience. I tried a WBTB and somewhere as I was falling asleep, remembered looking at my hands and feeling numb. That is all.

But anyway, last night, something even weirder happened! I still haven't been able to determine if it was a lucid dream or just a dream about lucid dreaming, but some time during my dream as I raced down the hill to get to school, buffetted by heavy winds and unable to run fast, I remember thinking '**** it, this had better be a dream or else.' At that moment, as a test, I remember me (or at least my dream subconscience) imagining myself being levitated by the wind - and that's what happened!

I concluded that I was dreaming, but slipped away soon after that.

Still, the point of explaining this is that what happened last night was identical to what I had described! If only I could determine whether it was a real lucid or not...

Originally Posted by O'nus

No, you missed it - learning to LD is a facade. I once truly believed in it.. but during that process I learned more about myself and then came to the conclusion that it was fake.. it is all about self-revelation. The deep motivation to LD is really a sense of control in life - think if you really had that feeling in your conscious life all the time.

What are you talking about?

You don't know what epoche's have in common with self-awareness..? I don't know how you can say that - they are almost synonymous if not a function of each other.

Babbling nonsense on purpose is so unnice! But I like it . It's such a pleasure when other talkers aren't deadly serious.

I don't have any methods anymore. I just dream and infrequently have "lucid dreams".

Once I came to my previous revelations - I did not need to strive for anything anymore.

You're a sad sad man!

I have a great respect for death and it was not revealed to myself till I started treasuring epoche's and phenomenology. Death is the greatest revelation and only in the moment, in an epoche, can you really appreciate the fragility of each moment and the inconsequence of your consciousness. Simultaneously, you revere the miraculousness of having a consciousness.

Did you try visiting a psychologist? You might have had a big trauma in past, that would explain your obsession with death. Really, thinking of death is hard stuff...

Originally Posted by 44CalibreSunlight

Anyway I don't know what to tell you. I feel what I know is awareness whether I can adequately explain it or not.

it's easy to make foolishness of an idea such as this in the first place, because it's such a phenomenon of the mind, but it appears to be working, as my dream recall has been improving a lot lately. As in the last few days, and I feel as if I'm giving second thoughts to occurrences in my dreams a lot more now.

Well yeah I surely agree that it works to an extent, never said it didn't. Do something frequently enough during the day, and you will do it during sleep, too!

OK, give me another chance to illustrate my thought. In past I used the popular method of hand-looking to become lucid, and you know what? It only made me lucid while I associated lucidity with it. I stopped associating the two, it stopped making me lucid: now I can study my hand in normal dreams without having a single suspicion about being asleep. That's what I mean about all the tricks, they make you remember things that are associated with them... useful things like lucidity. You plan to drag something into sleep during the day and do it (say, you suddenly become "self-focused" for a single moment in your sleep), and then you suddenly "remember" about lucidity, because the two ideas were tied as one in your mind.

It's like something very circular, a trick of memory. If "hands = lucidity", they will make you lucid. "Self-focus = lucidity" makes you lucid. It's "anything = lucidity"! But it can work without anything, in a pure way, too, "lucidity = lucidity". All the same. All are phantom tricks, but the purest version seems to be the "dumb desire" for lucidity.

Did I make myself understood this time?

Okay, I just read this, I understand exactly where you are coming from now.
Your method off desire -induced techniques basically supports a range of methods one of which being the concept of being aware or wanting to be aware in real life and in dreams, so it really just stretches the awareness idea back into a broader spectrum and different theories on why this particular method may work .

That's my understanding of it now, anything I got wrong?

"My" method supports absolutely all methods in the world! But it isn't mine, that's what everybody does, thinking that they're doing something else instead.

Originally Posted by MrFantasy

But seriously I think you might be ever so slightly mistaken about what I'm talking about when I say the word: Awareness

This is nothing tangible like thinking, it's more like a very experiential and vivid sense of being alive, not in a conceptual sense, but rather a DIRECT KNOWING which will always defy our attempts to understand it abstractly (with the mind).

I'd never call it awareness . It's such a vague term, everybody uses it in different ways. You say it's an emotion. Others say it's something else.

And yes I know what you're talking about, but again I wouldn't call it awareness. Although I don't know how to call it. Not at all. It's something like "being in touch with the world", as opposed to, say, "clinging to fixed ideas". I used to call it "spontaneity". It's the closest word that I can find. You kind of cut off the big layer of experience that is purely mental and instead feel more alive. And I believe it's the normal state for everybody, at least I can swear that I've lived in it non-stop in childhood, I remember that feeling always present. It's school or something, maybe even PCs, but something eventually cuts you off from being focused on your immediate sensations and sponaneity and makes you pay more attention to the mental layer. Then it becomes "richer" and more rigid, you start "looking through it" at the world, judging things, etc.

Are we talking about the same thing so far?

Well if so, let's not call it awareness. I can't call it awareness, because I'm a firm believer that I am already aware. Who cares what you're aware of, mental layer, physical sensations, etc.? It's all awareness. And to say that one of them is superior just doesn't cut it. That you like one of them more doesn't make it superior or "higher". And I don't mean it in a moralistic way, I really think that the quantity of awareness involved is the same, it's the way you use it that is different.

As for this thread, I believe it was not about the same thing that you're talking about. Well maybe I'm wrong, but there are too many definitions for awareness. What you talked about is related to feelings, not to thoughts. And I was speaking against thought-related concepts, for the most part, and of course in the very same vein. Or do you really think that it's impossible to imagine that you're having direct experience with help of the mental layer and though it? It's pretty possible. And usually those who do take time to practice such methods are doing them in their own heads only, inside of the mental layer. Not through a feeling. It still works as a placebo, why not, LDing can be "desired" in your head successfully. What I said is that it's all placeboes, all this stuff about "more self-focus = I'll be lucid", "I watch my thoughts - I'll be lucid", all that sounds pretty suspicious to me.

And were it not suspicious, it's still not directly related to LDing. I don't know why you're spending time defending it. You defend it as if it was about direct experience, but even kids don't have lucidity in all their dreams, if direct experience could produce lucidity then all their dreams would be lucid.

Here are some links to a couple of scenes from a great movie called Waking Life (which coincidentally is about lucid dreaming) that I feel almost perfectly capture what I'm trying to express here. You might need to watch them a few times to catch what I'm saying, but it's in there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy3yD5K0gvE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDWEkzaBULQ

Oh I'm ashamed to admit but I don't have a flash player. Reinstalling Windows too often lately, I find myself to lazy to download a flash player every time . Anyway I think we understand each other without movies well enough?

Arutad, why do you patronize me instead of actually giving substantial responses?

~

Originally Posted by Arutad

Anyway I think we understand each other without movies well enough?

I doubt it, but it's not really a big deal so I guess we'll just agree to disagree...

This thread had great potential to be very interesting.

Now it's just fallen to shit and I'm sick of coming in here.............................................. ............................................

Originally Posted by O'nus

Arutad, why do you patronize me instead of actually giving substantial responses?

~

Because he sees you two have hit a wall. It's the wall that anyone comes up against in a religion vs science debate, or spiritualism vs practicality...etc.

He can't change your mind because he relies on solely question-evidence type of arguments, you rely on why-not type of arguments. I'm not making a judgement, but those 2 types are not compatible.

Originally Posted by Ethereal

Because he sees you two have hit a wall. It's the wall that anyone comes up against in a religion vs science debate, or spiritualism vs practicality...etc.

He can't change your mind because he relies on solely question-evidence type of arguments, you rely on why-not type of arguments. I'm not making a judgement, but those 2 types are not compatible.

What? What has here in this thead reminded you about science vs. religion debate? There's nothing here about science, or about religion.

It's just that people here cling to various notions and are too stubborn to study them. It's much more comfortable to claim that the others are wrong instead. Or that they're arguing because of "science"

See how MrFatansy just escaped? He was not interested in talking about his notions to start with, he was interested in infecting others with them. If that doesn't work it isn't worthy to discuss them, not for people who cling so strongly to their notions that all other opinions are claimed as wrong beforehand. Unfortunately that's a normal forum reality, and it's only worth coming here to talk in a vacuum.

oh man you really are ditsy arent you..

Originally Posted by Arutad

What? What has here in this thead reminded you about science vs. religion debate? There's nothing here about science, or about religion.

Agreed.

It's just that people here cling to various notions and are too stubborn to study them. It's much more comfortable to claim that the others are wrong instead. Or that they're arguing because of "science"

Considering this, what are you insinuating about me? You cannot even provide a substantial response to what I have said and here you are pretentiously implying my stubbornness.

I thought you were intelligent.

See how MrFatansy just escaped? He was not interested in talking about his notions to start with, he was interested in infecting others with them. If that doesn't work it isn't worthy to discuss them, not for people who cling so strongly to their notions that all other opinions are claimed as wrong beforehand. Unfortunately that's a normal forum reality, and it's only worth coming here to talk in a vacuum.

Unless you were referring to him, then I am unsure (because I have not really read it).

However, you are still ignoring my questions and instead being pretentious.

Why?

~

Arutad, I don't really have time to read through the whole thread so maybe you answered this, but if a bug crawled on my desk and I was staring straight at it, but didn't for one second think about it because I was distracted with other thoughts, would you say I was aware of the bug?

Edit: since i'm not sure how long it will take you to get back on this...i'll take a stab for you.

You would say, correct me if I'm wrong, that yes, I am aware of the bug because my eyes are sensing it.

But someone comes by and says, hey, look at that bug, and I am awoken out of my trance-like state and now take notice of the bug; I am now aware that the bug is there. In other words, I THOUGHT about the bug.

The mere fact that my senses perceived the bug was not enough to make me aware of its presence.

Are we aware of each bit of information processed by our brain? Certainly not. In the same way that we are not constantly aware of all of our memories, there are trillions of bits of data that we tune out, constantly, so that we can, you know, make it to the bathroom and such.

Awareness and consciousness co-imply. Therefore, if you are aware of something, you are conscious of it. Therefore, if you are dreaming and not conscious, you are not aware of the things around you. Therefore, you could be walking along and seeing things in your dream, but not be aware of them. Therefore, it is a good exercise to train your attention on your surroundings if you want to become lucid in a dream, because you might be dreaming right now and not aware (conscious!).

Of course, you could say that you are aware, and therefore conscious, of each and every photon of light hitting your eye at this moment, each and every air molecule compressing against your ear drum, each and every...well, you get the idea. This position has the unfortunate properties of 1) being impossible and 2) forcing you to conclude that you are always lucid when dreaming (I would like to think 2) is possible!).

Originally Posted by O'nus

Considering this, what are you insinuating about me? You cannot even provide a substantial response to what I have said and here you are pretentiously implying my stubbornness.

That was not about you.

However, you are still ignoring my questions and instead being pretentious.

God.. who was talking to me in this thread?! Was is it a crime to ignore nobody?

Omg if you really disliked my reply to your post, I'll post another one.

Originally Posted by 3FLryan

You would say, correct me if I'm wrong, that yes, I am aware of the bug because my eyes are sensing it.

No I wouldn't say it You said that you were distracted by thoughts, so I'd say that you were aware of your thoughts. Of course you weren't aware of the bug if you were aware of your thoughts instead.

My belief is that awareness is constantly present, it isn't gong on and off, it just switches its focus. In this way you can be aware of anything and not aware of anything, but you're always aware of something.

But someone comes by and says, hey, look at that bug, and I am awoken out of my trance-like state and now take notice of the bug; I am now aware that the bug is there. In other words, I THOUGHT about the bug.

It's ok by me, I would only disagree with "trance-like state". It's the same state whether you're staring at the bug or not. Here you're speaking in such a way as if the bug was reality, and your thoughts or anything else you might be aware of was not reality. Only the bug. So if you weren't aware of the bug, then you were in trance-like state. But what if reality was a trashbin? When you are not aware of the trashbin, that means that you're always in a trance-like state... In other words, that's pretty relative, you can hardly say that something is real and you're truly aware when perceiving it, and all the rest is unworthy crap that you perceive through the trance-state.

Are we aware of each bit of information processed by our brain? Certainly not. In the same way that we are not constantly aware of all of our memories, there are trillions of bits of data that we tune out, constantly, so that we can, you know, make it to the bathroom and such.

Agreed.

Awareness and consciousness co-imply. Therefore, if you are aware of something, you are conscious of it.

I agree, and from my outlook it follows that we're always aware of something, always conscious of something. From your outlook it follows that unless you're aware of everything you're in an unconscious state... which logically means all the time, because it's impossible to be aware of everything.

Therefore, if you are dreaming and not conscious, you are not aware of the things around you. Therefore, you could be walking along and seeing things in your dream, but not be aware of them. Therefore, it is a good exercise to train your attention on your surroundings if you want to become lucid in a dream, because you might be dreaming right now and not aware (conscious!).[/B]

Are you saying here that consciousness and awareness are two different things?

You know, if I'm not mistaken, it would seem that you call conscious only the moment when you yourself think "I am conscious". So if you watch a movie and get absorbed into it, you'd say that you were not conscious of the movie afterwards. Or if you're thinking and aware of your thoughts, but not focused on the fact that you're doing it, you'd say that you were not conscious of your thoughts. That's about meta-awareness again: awareness exists only when I'm being aware that it exists. Ok, if this is so, then you're usually 100% unconscious.

Of course, you could say that you are aware, and therefore conscious, of each and every photon of light hitting your eye at this moment, each and every air molecule compressing against your ear drum, each and every...well, you get the idea. This position has the unfortunate properties of 1) being impossible and 2) forcing you to conclude that you are always lucid when dreaming (I would like to think 2) is possible!).

I see your idea, you claim that consciousness is linked to physical reality only. But we can think and can have fantasies, in the same way that we can have dreams, and despite being non-physical reality our thoughts are "real". Being focused on them is not unconsciousness imho.

The promised post to O'nus:

Originally Posted by O'nus

No, you missed it - learning to LD is a facade. I once truly believed in it.. but during that process I learned more about myself and then came to the conclusion that it was fake.. it is all about self-revelation. The deep motivation to LD is really a sense of control in life - think if you really had that feeling in your conscious life all the time.

So how did you realize from the sense of control that dreams were fake? I cannot see how the two are connected.

You don't know what epoche's have in common with self-awareness..? I don't know how you can say that - they are almost synonymous if not a function of each other.

How do you discern between the two..?

Epoche is a phenomenological method, it's not self-awareness and not "present moment" as you claimed below. It's a method, not anything else, and a bad one at that, nobody really knows how to "do epoche". Besides, I have no idea how you came to call it self-awareness, phenomenology is more like my own line of thought, claiming that awareness is not self-reflective or disappearing, which is why I like it

Well yes and no. If you want to truth, it is the idea that lead me to eventually worship the idea of death.

I have a great respect for death and it was not revealed to myself till I started treasuring epoche's and phenomenology. Death is the greatest revelation and only in the moment, in an epoche, can you really appreciate the fragility of each moment and the inconsequence of your consciousness. Simultaneously, you revere the miraculousness of having a consciousness.

~

Epoche is a contrived notion, after all, how can you "observe" a pure basic idea of something? Nobody knows, although some book-writers think they do. And I see that you put your own meaning into it, connected it to death, and expect me to "know" what you mean... I'm not a telepath!

Originally Posted by Arutad

No I wouldn't say it You said that you were distracted by thoughts, so I'd say that you were aware of your thoughts. Of course you weren't aware of the bug if you were aware of your thoughts instead. OK - I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE READ THE THREAD MORE CAREFULLY

My belief is that awareness is constantly present, it isn't gong on and off, it just switches its focus. In this way you can be aware of anything and not aware of anything, but you're always aware of something. - UNLESS YOU ARE UNCONSCIOUS. ALSO, I WONDER, DOES IGNORANCE PLAY A ROLE? FOR EXAMPLE, IF I AM "AWARE" THAT THE BUG IS BLUE, BUT I HAVE LEARNED THE COLOR BLUE WRONG, AND THE BUG IS *REALLY* GREEN, CAN WE SAY I AM AWARE OF THE COLOR OF THE BUG?


It's ok by me, I would only disagree with "trance-like state". It's the same state whether you're staring at the bug or not. Here you're speaking in such a way as if the bug was reality, and your thoughts or anything else you might be aware of was not reality. Only the bug. So if you weren't aware of the bug, then you were in trance-like state. But what if reality was a trashbin? When you are not aware of the trashbin, that means that you're always in a trance-like state... In other words, that's pretty relative, you can hardly say that something is real and you're truly aware when perceiving it, and all the rest is unworthy crap that you perceive through the trance-state. - "TRANCE-LIKE STATE" AS IN "NOT AWARE OF WHAT ONE WOULD NORMALLY BE EXPECTED TO BE AWARE OF, GIVEN THE SITUATION". I WOULD SAY THAT IN MY PRESENTED EXAMPLE ONE WOULD RATIONALLY BE EXPECTED TO BE AWARE OF THE BUG'S PRESENCE, SO IT IS WORTH EXPLORING DIFFERENTIATED STATES OF AWARENESS. I HAVE TO CONCLUDE NOT ALL AWARENESS IS CREATED EQUAL.


Agreed. - YAY.


I agree, and from my outlook it follows that we're always aware of something, always conscious of something. I AGREE EXCEPT FOR THE CAVEAT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS, IN WHICH CASE WE ARE NOT AWARE OF ANYTHING. From your outlook it follows that unless you're aware of everything you're in an unconscious state... which logically means all the time, because it's impossible to be aware of everything. - NO: "YOU ARE NOT AWARE OF SOMETHING MEANS YOU ARE UNCONSCIOUS OF THAT PARTICULAR SOMETHING" =/ "YOU ARE NOT AWARE OF ANYTHING UNLESS CONSCIOUS OF EVERYTHING".

Are you saying here that consciousness and awareness are two different things? - NO, IN FACT I AM SAYING AWARENESS AND CONSCIOUSNESS ARE SYNONYMOUS, SO IF YOU ARE NOT AWARE OF THE TRUE NATURE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS IN A LUCID DREAM, YOU ARE NOT CONSCIOUS (LUCID, DUH), AND SHOULD THEREFORE TAKE PAINS TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE CONSCIOUS, OR AWARE, OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS, WHICH I BELIEVE WAS THE OP'S ORIGINAL POINT.

TO MAKE MY POINT AS CLEAR AS POSSIBLE, CONSIDER THIS: IF 'X' DOES NOT PHYSICALLY EXIST, BUT YOU ARE NOT AWARE THAT 'X' DOES NOT PHYSICALLY EXIST, THEN YOU ARE NOT AWARE OF 'X'.

You know, if I'm not mistaken, it would seem that you call conscious only the moment when you yourself think "I am conscious". So if you watch a movie and get absorbed into it, you'd say that you were not conscious of the movie afterwards. Or if you're thinking and aware of your thoughts, but not focused on the fact that you're doing it, you'd say that you were not conscious of your thoughts. That's about meta-awareness again: awareness exists only when I'm being aware that it exists. Ok, if this is so, then you're usually 100% unconscious. - NO - THERE IS NO META-AWARENESS IN MY ARGUMENT.


I see your idea, you claim that consciousness is linked to physical reality only. NO - I AM NOT SURE HOW YOU GOT THIS IDEA. But we can think and can have fantasies, in the same way that we can have dreams, and despite being non-physical reality our thoughts are "real". Being focused on them is not unconsciousness imho. - I AGREE.

Arutad, please see my responses above in all caps

After re-reading everything, I think I can boil my point down to one sentence:

Ignorance of essential properties of 'X' prohibits awareness of 'X'.

So, you can see, I agree that we are aware of our fantasies, because we know they do not exist (existence, of course, being perhaps the most essential property of anything, and if we do not know the fantasies do not exist, we are delusional and not aware). But we are not aware of our dreams unless we are lucid (in which case we know it is a dream and we then know nothing exists, or we wake up an become aware that "it was just a dream"), and therefore it is advantageous to discriminatingly observe the qualities of our surroundings, for we might be dreaming.

Awareness is when you are directly percieving exactly what you are faced with, without filtering through your mind or your thoughts. It is directly experiencing reality. We are hypnotized by our thoughts.

Awareness is when someone says "look at this"
and you [B]don't[B] say "Oh, that's a rose. I have seen a rose before, they are pretty, So?"

Very often people need a shock to shake them out of the trance and into awareness. Like when you are driving and all of a sudden a boulder falls right in front of your car and you don't have time to think, you have to respond. With unawareness we react to stimuli according to learned habit. With awareness we[I]respond[I] consciously.

What is awareness? Find a friend and stare into her eyes while she is staring into yours. You can tell that when you have a thought your attention comes off of her eyes, like a shadow going across the sun. Awareness is when you settle into the atomic present moment and there is no space for a thought to exist. Thought takes time to think and while you are thinking you are at most aware of what already happened a moment ago by the time your mind interprets it. Or you are looking for at best the moment into the future. With awareness you are IN the NOW moment without any interpretation, any defining, any filtering. I call the present moment atomic because it is ONE dimensional. It has no length, no width. Actually it is the one dimensional point where the fourth and fifth dimension intersect. When you are in the MOMENT of awareness it will quiver, you will slip, it will be hard to hold for any length of time at first. It will be like trying to look at a star with binoculars without a tripod.

Anyway, with awareness we get out of our heads and into our bodies. We are not thinking ABOUT reality but EXPERIENCING reality. It is different than attention although it requires attention and attention requires some awareness.

With practice it will feel like a wind or a river or current of energy flowing from perpendicular to this dimension and if you turn to face it you will enter it.

You know how you never mistake a memory for the NOW reality. A memory is not a real experience of now. People say that the past doesn't exist and the future hasn't happened yet. Do you know why? Because the NOW moment is the only moment that you exist in. It is your SELF that makes the now real.

Or try this: when listening to people speaking English, don't interpret the words, just listen to the sounds. Impossible. So try listening to people speak a forein language. This is how our minds interpret every sound we hear automatically without awareness. If you here a car go by outside while you are reading this you won't think anything of it. Your mind will automatically tell you "that's a car" so you won't have to be aware of it. But if it is a sound that your mind doesn't recognize? You will become aware. This is why it is difficult to maintain lucidity all the time in dreams. How do you know that it is a car? You don't! With awareness you actually listen, you don't just hear.

Without awareness you look without seeing, you hear without listening. The zen saying for this is "You are blinded by what you see". This is the meaning of "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" because our minds don't have that in our catalogs of identified sounds.

Without awareness we are living in our subconscious catalogs of reality. What we are experiencing are symbols of reality itself. Only with awareness do we actually become conscious. That is the meaning of sleepwalking through waking life. That is why people are zombies. That is the meaning of when Jesus's disciple says "Can I catch up with you later? my father died and I have to go bury him." And Jesus responds "Let the Dead bury the Dead"

Look at a drawing of a person done by someone who is looking but not seeing the person he is drawing. If the person has glasses the 'artist' will draw a symbol of glasses on the portait instead of actually drawing what he sees. The eyes will be symbols of eyes. There will be a small forehead because it is an empty space that the subconscious ignores.

Awareness and lucidity are one and the same. The reason we are not lucid in dreams is because we are not aware in waking life. The reason we are dreaming from our subconscious is becasue we are living from our subconscious. In dreams we look without seeing, we hear without listening and we act habitually rather than intentionally because we do that in waking life.

Next time you are driving, try to be aware. Awareness is the hardest to practice when you are driving. There is something about driving that puts us into a deep trance. Unless you are speeding and weaving in and out of traffic and driving dangerously. That is why people are attracted to danger, that is why people are thrill seekers. It takes them out of their unawareness.